Budget/Financing – Page 61 – School Information System

Do School Libraries Need Books?

Keeping traditional school libraries up to date is costly, with the constant need to acquire new books and to find space to store them. Yet for all that trouble, students roam the stacks less and less because they find it so much more efficient to work online. One school, Cushing Academy, made news last fall when it announced that it would give away most of its 20,000 books and transform its library into a digital center.
Do schools need to maintain traditional libraries? What are the educational consequences of having students read less on the printed page and more on the Web?

New Jersey School, District & State Report Cards

New Jersey Department of Education:

The federal No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act has imposed specific accountability and reporting requirements on states. The NCLB reports present school-, district-, and state-level information in those areas mandated by NCLB, which are as follows: status regarding Adequate Yearly Progress; information on highly qualified teachers; attendance and dropout data; and assessment data that has incorporated all of the conditions mandated under NCLB for meeting federally approved proficiency levels.
The results displayed on NCLB Reports are based on the state assessment data with the NCLB conditions applied. Additionally, the NCLB data incorporates the data appeals submitted by districts/schools that have been granted by the NJDOE. Therefore, the data in the NCLB Reports may be different from the data displayed on the NJ School Report Cards.

State secrets on Texas school front

Rick Casey:

Before being ordered by Gov. Rick Perry not to compete for a chunk of the $4.3 billion “Race to the Top” federal grants for public schools, staffers at the Texas Education Agency had put in more than 800 hours preparing an application.
Inquiring minds, including my colleague Ericka Mellon, wanted to look at what our employees had proposed and filed requests for copies of the draft under the Texas Public Information Act.
But TEA Commissioner Robert Scott, a Perry loyalist, ordered agency attorneys to appeal to the attorney general, asking that the work be declared a state secret.
The Public Information Act states that all documents produced with the taxpayers’ money are public with certain specific exceptions
So what exception is the TEA citing?
The exception that information can be kept from the public if its release “would give advantage to a competitor or bidder.”
But we’re not bidding or competing.

Denying Choices

WSFA:

Why shouldn’t local school boards have the option of allowing charter schools in their districts if they feel it can help serve students better?
A group of legislators in the House Education Appropriations Committee not only rejected that option, but didn’t allow other members of the House to even vote on it.
They rejected the charter schools possibility outright. With it they also rejected the possibility of millions of dollars in federal assistance for education.
For a state that can use every cent and more to improve education, this wasn’t a wise choice.
The $ 4 billion dollars in federal money will be spent, but the likelihood of part of it being spent for our students is now diminished, since part of the criteria for getting the money is charter schools being an option in your state.

Progressive Dane to host Madison School Board Candidate Forum 2/21/2010

via a TJ Mertz email [PDF Flyer]:

What: Public Forum featuring all candidates for Madison Board of Education.
When: Sunday February 21, 2010; 1:30 to 3:30 PM.
Where: JC Wright Middle School, 1717 Fish Hatchery Rd. Madison, WI.
Contact: Thomas J. Mertz, tjmertz@sbcglobal.net; (608) 255-4550
On Sunday, February 21, voters in the Madison Metropolitan School District will have their first opportunity to hear and question the School Board candidates on the ballot in the April 6 election. Unopposed incumbents Beth Moss and Maya Cole will begin with short statements on their service and why they are seeking re-election. Next the candidates for Seat 4, James Howard and Tom Farley, will answer questions from Progressive Dane and the audience. Madison District 12 Alder and member of the Board of Education
– Common Council Liaison Committee Satya Rhodes-Conway will serve as the moderator.
Progressive Dane is hosting this event as a public service to increase awareness of this important election.”The seven people on the School Board are responsible for the education of about 24,000 students and an annual budget of roughly $400 million.” explained Progressive Dane Co-Chair and Education Task Force Chair Thomas J. Mertz. “We want people to know what is going on, choose their candidate wisely and get
involved.
Candidates Tom Farley and James Howard welcome this opportunity to communicate with the voters. Farley expects a substantive discussion; he is “looking forward to participating in the Progressive Dane forum. It will certainly be our most in-depth public discussion of the issues – and most likely the liveliest and most enjoyable one too.”
Howard expressed his appreciation for “this opportunity to talk to the voters about my record of service with public schools and my unique perspective that I will add to the Board of Education” and is also ready to discuss “how to maintain and strengthen Madison schools.”
Incumbents Cole and Moss are also pleased to take part. Cole said she is “happy to have this opportunity to meet with members of our community to discuss the work of the Board, to listen to their concerns and to share the opportunities we are embracing to make our district better for all children. Moss also appreciates the chance to share her thoughts on “the good work that is going on in the schools and some of the challenges we face.”
Progressive Dane is a progressive political party in Dane County, Wisconsin. Progressive Dane is working to make Dane County a better place for everyone (no exceptions!). Progressive Dane helps community members organize around issues that are important to them and also works on the grassroots level to elect progressive political candidates.
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Any merit to National Merit program?

Jonathan Reider via Valeria Strauss:

I have long wondered why the National Merit scholarship program had so much cache, given the criteria necessary for winning.

The program is a competition in which kids become eligible if they do well on the PSAT, or Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test, which is generally taken in 11th grade though some students take it earlier. Any regular reader to this blog will know that I do not look kindly on anything in education that relies on the a single standardized test score.

Here is a critique of the program that I recently read and wanted to share. It was written by Jonathan Reider, director of college counseling at San Francisco University High School, in response to a list-serv query about how schools should display National Merit winners. His advice: Don’t.

Madison School District appears to be softening stance toward charter schools

Susan Troller, via a Chris Murphy email:

When teachers Bryan Grau and Debora Gil R. Casado pitched an idea in 2002 to start a charter school in Madison that would teach classes in both English and Spanish, they ran into resistance from school administrators and their own union. Grau and his cohorts were asked to come up with a detailed budget for their proposal, but he says they got little help with that complex task. He recalls one meeting in particular with Roger Price, the district’s director of financial services.
“We asked for general help. He said he would provide answers to our specific questions. We asked where to begin and again he said he would answer our specific questions. That’s the way it went.”
Ruth Robarts, who was on the Madison School Board at the time, confirms that there was strong resistance from officials under the former administration to the creation of Nuestro Mundo, which finally got the green light and is now a successful program that is being replicated in schools around the district.
“First they would explain how the existing programs offered through the district were already doing a better job than this proposal, and then they would show how the proposal could never work,” says Robarts. “There seemed to be a defensiveness towards these innovative ideas, as if they meant the district programs were somehow lacking.”
The Madison School District “has historically been one of the most hostile environments in the state for charter schools, especially under Superintendent Rainwater,” adds John Gee, executive director of the Wisconsin Association of Charter Schools.

Related: the now dead proposed Madison Studio Charter and Badger Rock Middle School.
Madison continues to lag other Districts in terms of innovative opportunities, such as Verona’s new Chinese Mandarin immersion charter school.

Amid rising tuition costs and heavy debt burdens, college marketplace lacks consumer focus

MassINC, C. Anthony Broh & Dana Ansel:

Rising college costs have Americans making greater sacrifices to get their degrees. In 2008, families took on more than $86 billion in college loans and the average undergraduate finished school with more than $23,000 in debt. Higher education is now one of the most important investment decisions middle class Americans make. But far too often they’re lured to colleges with the most energetic tour guide, the biggest reputation for partying, or the highest ranking in the popular press.
These temptations win out because the choices are complicated and families aren’t getting the information they needed to make truly informed decisions. Beyond choosing a school, families trying to find the best savings plan or the least expensive loan also face complicated choices with insufficient information.
According to the new MassINC report, “When you look at the tuition prices that middle class families are facing, together with the debt burdens graduates are taking on, it is astounding that there is such little transparency in the higher education marketplace,” said Greg Torres, President of MassINC and Publisher of CommonWealth magazine. “By laying out a framework for how parents and students navigate this system, we hope to shed some light on what we can do to give more support to families making one of the biggest investments of their lives.”

Read the complete report here. CTRL – click to download the 2.0MB PDF file.

An Evaluation: Virtual Charter Schools

Wisconsin Legislative Audit Bureau:

Virtual charter schools are publicly funded nonsectarian schools that are exempt from many regulations that apply to traditional public schools and that offer the majority of their classes online. They began operating in Wisconsin during the 2002-03 school year. Pupils typically attend from their homes and communicate with teachers using e-mail, by telephone, or in online discussions. During the 2007-08 school year, 15 virtual charter schools enrolled 2,951 pupils. Most were high schools.
A Wisconsin Court of Appeals ruling in December 2007 prevented the Department of Public Instruction (DPI) from providing state aid payments to a virtual charter school through the open enrollment program, which allows pupils to attend public schools outside of their school districts of residence. 2007 Wisconsin Act 222, which was enacted to address concerns raised in the lawsuit, also required us to address a number of topics related to virtual charter schools. Therefore, we evaluated:

enrollment trends, including the potential effects of a limit on open enrollment in virtual charter schools that was enacted in 2007 Wisconsin Act 222;
virtual charter school operations, including attendance requirements, opportunities for social development and interaction, and the provision of special education and related services;
funding and expenditures, including the fiscal effects of open enrollment on “sending” and “receiving” districts;
teaching in virtual charter schools, including teacher licensing and pupil-teacher interaction; and
academic achievement, including test scores and other measures, as well as pupils’, parents’, and teachers’ satisfaction with virtual charter schools.

K-12 Tax & Spending Climate: Clueless in Washington

The Economist:

IT WAS never reasonable to expect that Barack Obama’s budget proposal, delivered to Congress on February 1st, would do much to bring down America’s vast deficit in the near term. True, the economy has returned to growth. But a big part of that consists of restocking after a savage downturn that has left inventories depleted. Consumers are still struggling with the collapse in the values of their homes and other assets. And unemployment stands at a stubborn 10%: the administration forecasts see only a fractional fall in joblessness this year.
Unlike other rich countries, America lacks the “automatic stabilisers” that kick in during times of recession to help boost demand. Unemployment benefit is extremely limited. Most states are legally barred from running deficits, so when their revenues fall in times of recession they make painful cuts, firing workers and ending programmes–thus exacerbating the downturn rather than offsetting it. Only the federal government can fill the demand gap, and if it is too parsimonious and the recession returns, the deficit would get much worse.

Achievement gap

Akron Beacon Journal:

Ask about the signature achievements of George W. Bush’s eight years as president, and the No Child Left Behind Act is certain to be high on the list. The 2002 law made accountability a watchword in public school education. It aimed to evaluate the nation’s elementary and secondary schools based on student test scores and to hold schools, teachers and administrators to account for their success or failure in moving students to achieve proficiency targets for the classroom.
The law, which has been the subject of much debate and criticism from the start, is up for reauthorization this year. President Obama has made clear his intent to reshape the legislation and the federal role in public education. Not clear yet is what precisely he intends to do.
No Child Left Behind has been criticized fiercely for its heavy emphasis on yearly testing and the rating of schools as successes or failures on the basis of test scores. For teachers and school officials, one of the most contentious of the law’s requirements is that schools be able to show, from the test scores, that every student group is making adequate yearly progress, AYP. Repeated failure to make AYP results in penalties that include shutting down schools.
The law also set a deadline: that students be proficient in math and English by 2014, a goal Obama’s secretary of education, Arne Duncan, recently described as utopian.

A Letter from Polly Williams to Tony Evers on the Milwaukee Public Schools

Wisconsin Representative Annette Polly Williams:

February 5, 2010
State Superintendent Tony Evers
Department of Public Instruction
125 S. Webster Street
PO Box 7841
Madison, WI 53707-7841
Dear Superintendent Evers:
I am contacting you regarding your Notice of Decision dated February 4, 2010 issued to the Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS) which would potentially eliminate the $175 million in federal funds received for services to low-income children through the Title I program. In your press statement, you indicated that you had a legal responsibility to the children of Milwaukee and that you were using the only tool allowed under state law to ensure these federal funds are used effectively to improve MPS. Not only I am deeply perplexed by the timing of this notice, but I’m equally concemed over the use of your authority to withhold federal dollars to “speed up change” in MPS. I find your efforts to be disingenuous.

Clusty Search: Polly Williams, Tony Evers. Via the Milwaukee Drum.

Politics of public education reform – exploring Race to the Top’s charter school emphasis

Bridgette Wallis:

President Obama’s Race to the Top (RttT) state competition has brought charter schools to the forefront of public education reform. Additionally, charter schools are prominent in Obama’s 2011 proposed budget – increasing funding for charter schools and an extra $1.8 billion toward Supporting Student Success (which focuses on Promise Neighborhoods, of which charter schools are the central focus).
RttT relies heavily on charter schools as a tool for reform, awarding more points to states which enable charter school creation than to those which do not:

Madison School District Budget Planning Calendar 2010-2011

20K PDF:

HOPE Christian schools go quietly about business of teaching

Erin Richards:

It’s easy to miss the school tucked into the corner of a strip mall at N. 25th St. and W. North Ave. and its sister building a few miles away, an airy gray metal and brick structure that doesn’t have a sign yet.
The most noticeable school of the three may be at the south end of a nonprofit building on N. King Drive, and that’s because a large banner outside proclaims the high school’s name.
But within these unassuming spaces, HOPE Christian Schools are quietly expanding and changing, figuring out the best way to make sure every child – from kindergarten through 12th grade – is on the path to college.
The schools are without frills because energy and resources at this point are better spent on the elements more closely tied to student success: strong teachers who want to stay year to year, innovative and empowered administrators, testing tools that provide day-to-day and week-to-week feedback about how fast kids are progressing and which ones need more attention.
“We’re still focusing on what our model looks like,” said Andrew Neumann, president of HOPE Christian Schools.
Neumann also is president of the umbrella nonprofit Educational Enterprises, which plans to establish schools nationwide that help populations of disadvantaged, minority children get to college. The schools in Milwaukee are a testing ground; this year, Educational Enterprises opened a HOPE-inspired college prep charter elementary school in Phoenix.

Choices without Equity: Charter  School  Segregation  and  the   Need  for  Civil  Rights  Standards 

Erica  Frankenberg,  Genevieve  Siegel‐Hawley, and  Jia  Wang [1.4MB PDF] :

Seven years after the Civil Rights Project first documented extensive patterns of charter school segregation, the charter sector continues to stratify students by race, class and possibly language. This study is released at a time of mounting federal pressure to expand charter schools, despite on-going and accumulating evidence of charter school segregation.
Our analysis of the 40 states, the District of Columbia, and several dozen metropolitan areas with large enrollments of charter school students reveals that charter schools are more racially isolated than traditional public schools in virtually every state and large metropolitan area in the nation. While examples of truly diverse charter schools exist, our data show that these schools are not reflective of broader charter trends.
Four major themes emerge from this analysis of federal data. First, while charter schools are increasing in number and size, charter school enrollment presently accounts for only 2.5% of all public school students. Despite federal pressure to increase charter schools–based on the notion that charter schools are superior to traditional public schools, in spite of no conclusive evidence in support of that claim–charter school enrollment remains concentrated in just five states.
Second, we show that charter schools, in many ways, have more extensive segregation than other public schools. Charter schools attract a higher percentage of black students than traditional public schools, in part because they tend to be located in urban areas. As a result, charter school enrollment patterns display high levels of minority segregation, trends that are particularly severe for black students.

More here and here.

K-12 Tax & Spending Climate: Borrowing from Our Children

Kenneth Anderson:

I realized, talking in office hours with a couple of my law students, that they did not really understand what is meant by the phrase “borrowing from our children” — as we often hear it raised or referenced these days in budget, deficit, and other policy debates. These are bright students who have often taken some economics, but haven’t necessarily learned to think through common economic tropes in current arguments. So it hadn’t really occurred to them to ask, what does it mean to “borrow from our children”? The children who mostly don’t yet exist, and in any case don’t have any money from which to borrow.
As soon as it’s put that way, it is obvious that what we actually mean is, we will borrow today from people who do have money — and who are willing to forego consumption today, presumably in China and the rest of Asia — and our children will repay the principal and interest. We have internalized the consumption (er, investment? -ed.) currently and externalized the repayment. It might be more accurate to say that we have exercised an option with regards to the future — we are the holders and they the involuntary writers of an option. But the fundamental public policy point is that in order to engage in this borrowing exercise today, even if we are going to “put” the repayment to our children, someone today has to be willing to give up consumption now and lend us those resources today.
To that end, David Sanger has a nice piece in the New York Times Week in Review, “The Debtor the World Still Bets On.” While we’re at it, Irwin Steltzer’s Weekly Standard essay, “Government Intervention Will Leave a Nasty Hangover.”

Schools use support centers to help students

Amy Hetzner:

Seated with a classmate at a table near the Whitnall High School library, freshman Josh Kelly stumbles into trouble with some of his make-up work for history class.
“There’s this artist in the Middle Ages, and I don’t know how to spell his name,” Josh says as teacher Andrew Baumann comes over quickly to help.
“Oh, Giotto . . . frescoes,” Baumann replies, bending over the teenager’s textbook. “He basically invented all these new techniques that people after him started using in the Renaissance.”
While Baumann is a social studies teacher, he’s not technically Josh’s social studies teacher. Instead, he’s one of two full-time faculty members who staff the school’s academic support center, an all-day service where students can come for tutoring, to complete projects or to make up assignments and tests.
It’s one of several solutions that high schools have come up with to provide students with more academic help during the school day, as opposed to trying to compete with work, sports and other activities that commonly lure teenagers outside of the school hours.
The year after Whitnall’s center started in 2006, Germantown High School initiated one of its own.
Today, it serves between 90 and 120 students a day – enough that Germantown’s Academic Support Center teacher, Cindy Collins, had to come up with a new 15-minute pass system to ensure she wasn’t turning students away. She also depends on volunteers from the school’s junior and senior classes to provide tutoring in easier subjects that freshmen might grapple with during the center’s busy times.

Chicago Public Schools Seek a Bit of Serenity

Crystal Yednak:

Ron Huberman, the chief executive of Chicago’s public schools, is looking to hire a “Culture of Calm” coordinator to improve conditions in schools deemed most at risk for student violence.
The coordinator would work closely with principals on resolving conflicts, providing better emotional support for students, and improving discipline and attendance. The job could pay up to $90,000.

Contact the Seattle Public Schools’ board and administrators, asks Where’s the Math

Martha McLaren:

On February 4th, King County Superior Court Judge Julie Spector ruled that last year’s Seattle School board decision to adopt the Discovering high school textbook series was arbitrary and capricious. Judge Spector’s ruling was heard and hailed across the country by private citizens and math education advocacy groups.
This unprecedented finding shows school boards and district administration that they need to consider evidence when making decisions. The voice of the community has been upheld by law, but the Seattle School district indicated they plan to appeal, demonstrating the typical arrogant, wasteful practices which necessitated the lawsuit in the first place.
Concerned individuals in Seattle and across the country need to speak up now, and let Seattle administration know that it’s time to move forward and refocus on the students, rather than defend a past mistake.
The ruling states:
“The court finds, based upon a review of the entire administrative record, that there is insufficient evidence for any reasonable Board member to approve the selection of the Discovering Series.”

“Innovation Schools” presentation

Andrew Kwatinetz:

I attended a presentation on Friday by Dr. Rob Stein, principal (and alum) of Manual High School in Denver. Manual HS has been designated an “Innovation School” with approval from its staff and the local & state school boards, which means they, by Colorado state law, can deviate from district and state regulations (but not federal). They are not a charter school – all of their staff are district employees.
Denver’s central bureaucracy and expenditures sounded similar to Seattle’s. He showed a picture of Denver’s policy manuals: thousands of pages occupying an entire shelf. Some were downright comical but illustrative of the dysfunction in public schools. For example, their 98 page union agreement includes “Article 15-1-1: Each school will have a desk and a chair for each teacher, except in unusual circumstances.” He was quick to point out that the union is not to blame, but it’s symptomatic of a breakdown in trust in a system no longer optimized for student education. He showed the Denver schools org chart with dozens of arrows pointing to all of the folks that a typical principal needs to answer to. He estimated 80+ hours a week just to respond to the emails. More importantly, he calculated $4,157 per student to pay for central staff despite a fuzzy connection to specific student learning in his school.

Well worth reading.

For Students at Risk, Early College Proves a Draw

Tamar Lewin:

Precious Holt, a 12th grader with dangly earrings and a SpongeBob pillow, climbs on the yellow school bus and promptly falls asleep for the hour-plus ride to Sandhills Community College.
When the bus arrives, she checks in with a guidance counselor and heads off to a day of college classes, blending with older classmates until 4 p.m., when she and the other seniors from SandHoke Early College High School gather for the ride home.
There is a payoff for the long bus rides: The 48 SandHoke seniors are in a fast-track program that allows them to earn their high-school diploma and up to two years of college credit in five years — completely free.
Until recently, most programs like this were aimed at affluent, overachieving students — a way to keep them challenged and give them a head start on college work. But the goal is quite different at SandHoke, which enrolls only students whose parents do not have college degrees.
Here, and at North Carolina’s other 70 early-college schools, the goal is to keep at-risk students in school by eliminating the divide between high school and college.
“We don’t want the kids who will do well if you drop them in Timbuktu,” said Lakisha Rice, the principal. “We want the ones who need our kind of small setting.”

Once again, the MMSD and State of WI are going in the wrong direction regarding education. Much more on “Credit for non-MMSD courses.

New Jersey Gov. Christie, lawmakers propose sweeping pension, health care changes for public employees

Claire Heininger:

Gov. Chris Christie and lawmakers of both parties will unveil a series of sweeping pension and benefit reforms Monday that could affect every public employee in New Jersey while saving the state billions of dollars, according to four officials with direct knowledge of the plan.
The proposals would require workers and retirees at all levels of government and local school districts to contribute to their own health care costs, ban part-time workers at the state and local levels from participating in the underfunded state pension system, cap sick leave payouts for all public employees and constitutionally require the state to fully fund its pension obligations each year.
Details of the four-bill package to be introduced Monday were provided to The Star-Ledger on the condition of anonymity because the four officials were not authorized to speak in advance.
The proposals go further than several past efforts at reining in taxpayer-funded pension and benefit costs, and if enacted would represent a major early victory for the new Republican governor and Democrats who control the state Legislature. But supporters anticipate an angry response from public employee and teachers unions that wield considerable power throughout the state — though lawmakers argue rank-and-file workers would have safer pensions than before.
Christie’s office declined to comment, as did top Democrats and Republicans involved in crafting the bills.
All sides had made their feelings clear last month, when Senate President Stephen Sweeney (D-Gloucester) announced the upper house’s intentions to fix a system that would otherwise “go bankrupt.” Lawmakers of both parties pledged their support, with Christie saying “bipartisan action is critical to reforming a broken pension and benefits system.”

The misguided race to federalize education

David Davenport, Gordon Lloyd:

President Obama and Education Secretary Arne Duncan call their $4 billion program of education reform grants the Race to the Top. A more accurate title would be the Race to Washington, because their program culminates a stunning decade in which school policy decisions have been wrested from local and state control to become matters of federal oversight. With the possible exception of Texas – where Gov. Rick Perry is resisting federal education grants with all their strings – no state has been left behind in the race to federalize education.
It’s easy to miss this important power shift because few of us notice, much less worry about, constitutional processes during a crisis. But, as presidential Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel famously said, “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste” because, he continued, it’s an opportunity to do things you couldn’t do before. And that’s precisely what is happening in education as we complete a transfer of money and power to Washington to oversee our schools, in violation of the 10th Amendment, a couple of hundred years of history and common sense.
There is a disturbing pattern of Washington using crises to consolidate power. First we declare war on a problem, which shifts things into crisis mode. Remember the war on poverty, the war on drugs, the war on illiteracy, the war on terror? Now we have a war on underperforming schools, so naturally Washington needs to step in and nationalize standards and tests.

An Oasis of Calm, for Young People That Need It

Jennifer Medina:

OF all the supplies at Haven Academy, a charter school in the South Bronx, none matter as much as the squishy. Like any elementary school, Haven has pencils, books and desks. But it is the squishy — a colorful rubber ball with dozens of tentacles that can withstand the strength of any young student — that daily absorbs a fit of anger or a mess of tears.
In the office of Jessica Nauiokas, the principal, a forlorn little boy yanks at a squishy and an angry little girl tosses one like a yo-yo. When Marquis, 6, was kicking and screaming one recent morning, a purple squishy was the only thing that could calm him.
Marquis, a kindergartner, had grown so frustrated with reading that he crawled under a table while other students wrote their alphabet letters; then he threw a chair across the room. Gabriella Cassandra, the school’s social worker, literally carried him to the principal’s office, where he again crawled under a chair.

Ohio State President Challenges Faculty Tenure

Andrew Welsh-Huggins:

COLUMBUS, Ohio – The leader of the country’s largest university thinks it’s time to re-examine how professors are awarded tenure, a type of job-for-life protection virtually unknown outside academia.
Ohio State University President Gordon Gee says the traditional formula that rewards publishing in scholarly journals over excellence in teaching and other contributions is outdated and too often favors the quantity of a professor’s output over quality.
“Someone should gain recognition at the university for writing the great American novel or for discovering the cure for cancer,” he told The Associated Press. “In a very complex world, you can no longer expect everyone to be great at everything.”
Plenty of people have raised the issue over the years, but Gee is one of the few American college presidents with the reputation and political prowess — not to mention the golden touch at fundraising — who might be able to begin the transformation.
Still, some professors are already skeptical.

More on the Successful Seattle Lawsuit against Discovering Math

Laurie Rogers:

Decision favors plaintiffs in court challenge of Seattle math text adoption
Statement from Laurie Rogers:
Last year, Seattle Public Schools adopted the Discovering math series despite valiant opposition from parents and math professionals, despite poor assessments of the Discovering series’ rigor and adherence to the new state math standards, and despite the fact that OSPI did NOT ultimately recommend the Discovering math series.
In response, three people filed a lawsuit, saying that Seattle didn’t have sufficient supporting evidence for its adoption, and also that the Discovering series was associated with an INCREASE in achievement gaps.
Recently, a judge agreed with the plaintiffs and – while stopping short of telling Seattle to cease and desist in their adoption – told Seattle to revisit its adoption. The district can continue to use the Discovering series, and Seattle administrators have stated their clear intention to do so.
Nevertheless, the court decision is momentous. It sets a precedent for districts across the country. When board members can’t justify their adoption decisions, the people now have legal recourse.

When Did They Stop Calling it Detention?

Jerry Scott and Jim Borgman, via a kind reader’s email.

The Players – in the Milwaukee Public Schools’ Governance Battle

Alan Borsuk:

You can bet that the state Department of Public Instruction won’t carry out its threat to withhold a bazillion dollars from Milwaukee Public Schools because MPS is not showing as much urgency as desired about making changes. (What in the world would make DPI think that?)
That doesn’t mean the threat is not an important matter and that it isn’t part of developments that could have a real impact. DPI leaders might be able to turn this into a way to force MPS to take more energetic steps, especially around special education and struggling students of all kinds.
The fact that DPI has the power to make a threat like this illustrates forcefully the changing picture of power when it comes to MPS. In fact, assuming a contract is signed in the next few days with Gregory Thornton, the School Board’s choice to be the new MPS superintendent, he will be only one of a roster of chief executives over aspects of Milwaukee schools, as I see it.
Here’s a guide to some of the folks at the center of the action these days:

Chandler schools limit recruitment to science, math, special ed teachers

Kerry Fehr-Snyder:

The outlook for new teachers is dim this year, prompting Chandler school officials to limit their recruiting efforts to science, math and special-education teachers for the first time.
Although other teachers are not being turned away, the Chandler Unified School Districts is focusing on hard-to-fill science, math and special-education teaching jobs for its Feb. 18 recruiting fair.
“This is our first year . . . . . we’re not having a general recruitment fair because of there are fewer needs, fewer positions openings than in the past,” said Laura Nook, the district’s human-resources director.
The district doesn’t yet know how many new teachers it will need next school year. Demand depends on student enrollment, the number of returning teachers and whether the Arizona Legislature again cuts K-12 funding to balance the state budget.

Judge holds Washington Legislature to the promise of education funding reform

Washington Attorney General:

A King County Superior Court judge today ruled the state does not provide ample funding for basic education then directed the Legislature to establish the cost of providing all Washington children with a basic education and establish how it will fully fund such education with stable and dependable state sources.
In his oral ruling this morning in McCleary v. State, also known as the “Basic Education case,” King County Superior Court Judge John Erlick also indicated the state’s 2009 education funding measure (HB 2261) could be a means to satisfy this direction. The court e-mailed the entire 73-page ruling to counsel immediately following the hearing.
“Judge Erlick rightly recognizes in his ruling the Legislature’s authority to set education funding policy,” said Attorney General Rob McKenna. “The Legislature took positive steps with its 2009 education funding reform efforts, and we understand the decision to suggest those reforms could be the basis for progress in this case.

Should Extra-Curricular Fine Arts Teachers be Paid the Same as Sports Coaches?

Nick Bubb:

Last week the Capital Times ran a story about how Tom Hardin, the head coach of forensics and drama at James Madison Memorial High School, plans to retire from coaching at the end of the season. There was even a follow up blog by the Capitol Times reacting to the discussion of the story.
As an assistant coach for Memorial forensics and debate program for several years, I read the paper and the comments in the online version with a more critical eye than others. It’s worthwhile to point out that I am extremely biased on this issue. Tom Hardin and Tim Scheffler taught me how to be a speech and debate coach and gave me a job that supported me throughout my post secondary education.
My responses to the news and comments are as follows:

More here.

Districts turn to arbitration to settle teacher contracts

Amy Hetzner:

In an action that’s likely to be repeated across the state, the West Bend School District is preparing to take contract negotiations with its teachers to arbitration, potentially among the first districts to do so since the Legislature removed teacher salary controls that held sway in Wisconsin for 16 years.
District negotiators and representatives for the West Bend Education Association have their first mediation session scheduled for next week, the first step they need to take before they can proceed to binding arbitration.
Administrators say they would prefer being able to resolve their issues with the teachers union by settling a contract through the mediation process. But they also say they are willing to go to arbitration if needed.
“We’re not afraid of it,” said Bill Bracken, labor relations coordinator for Davis & Kuelthau, which is representing the school district.
Other districts apparently aren’t afraid either. At least a couple of school districts outside southeastern Wisconsin are getting ready to certify their final offers after already going through the mediation process, indicating binding arbitration is probable, said Scott Mikesh, a staff attorney with the Wisconsin Association of School Boards.
On Friday, the Elmbrook School District and its teachers union announced they were filing for mediation help in their contract negotiations, although Assistant Superintendent Christine Hedstrom said the two sides were not filing for help with the state and won’t automatically go to arbitration if they reach deadlock.

Race to the Top?: Part II

Dr. Jim Taylor:

In my recent post, Race to the Top?: Part I, I described the academic achievement rat race in which students near the top of the educational food chain strive maniacally to win (or at least finish). I argued that the emphasis on testing by former President Bush’s No Child Left Behind law (NCLB) and continued with President Obama’s Race to the Top initiative (RTTT) has only exacerbated the problem better characterized by the title of the powerful new documentary by Vicki Abeles, Race to Nowhere. This post, in contrast, explores how RTTT impacts those students and schools at the other end of the educational food chain, those who are just trying to survive in the turbulent sea of American public education.
The first mistake that this administration made was to call education reform a race. Races connote winners and losers. Yet, we need to ensure that all our students and schools are winners. I think a more appropriate name for this initiative is “Climb to the Top” because the focus should be on how to get to the top.
The administration’s second mistake was to continue Bush’s initial mistake of focusing on testing; instead of being a tool for education reform, testing has morphed into the end-all, be-all of said reform. Yes, assessment is essential for determining the effectiveness of programs such as RTTT, aimed at achieving something as ethereal and elusive as education reform or the more tangible goal of closing the education and economic gaps between the haves and have-nots. At the same time, improved test scores should not be the ultimate objective of education reform.

Seattle Court Reverses School Board Decision to Implement Discovery Math

Judge Julie Spector’s decision [69K PDF], via Martha McLaren:

THIS MATTER having come on for hearing, and the Court having considered the pleadings, administrative record, and argument in this matter, the Court hereby enters the following Findings of Fact, Conclusions of Law, and Order:
FINDINGS OF FACT
1. On May 6, 2009, in a 4-3 vote, the Seattle School District Board of Directors chose the Discovering Series as the District’s high school basic math materials.
a. A recommendation from the District’s Selection Committee;
b. A January, 2009 report from the Washington State Office of Public Instruction ranking High School math textbooks, listing a series by the Holt Company as number one, and the Discovering Series as number two;
c. A March 11, 2009, report from the Washington State Board of Education finding that the Discovering Series was “mathematically unsound”;
d. An April 8, 2009 School Board Action Report authored by the Superintendent;
e. The May 6, 2009 recommendation of the OSPI recommending only the Holt Series, and not recommending the Discovering Series;
f. WASL scores showing an achievement gap between racial groups;
g. WASL scores from an experiment with a different inquiry-based math text at Cleveland and Garfield High Schools, showing that W ASL scores overall declined using the inquiry-based math texts, and dropped significantly for English Language Learners, including a 0% pass rate at one high school;
h. The National Math Achievement Panel (NMAP) Report;
1. Citizen comments and expert reports criticizing the effectiveness of inquiry-based math and the Discovering Series;
J. Parent reports of difficulty teaching their children using the Discovering Series and inquiry-based math;
k. Other evidence in the Administrative Record;
I. One Board member also considered the ability of her own child to learn math using the Discovering Series.
3. The court finds that the Discovering Series IS an inquiry-based math program.
4. The court finds, based upon a review of the entire administrative record, that there IS insufficient evidence for any reasonable Board member to approve the selection of the Discovering Series.
CONCLUSIONS OF LAW
I. The court has jurisdiction under RCW 28A.645.010 to evaluate the Board’s decision for whether it is arbitrary, capricious, or contrary to law;
2. The Board’s selection of the Discovering Series was arbitrary;
3. The Board’s selection of the Discovering Series was capricious;
4. This court has the authority to remand the Board’s decision for further review;
5. Any Conclusion of Law which is more appropriately characterized as a
Finding of Fact is adopted as such, and any Finding of Fact more appropriately
characterized as a Conclusion of Law is adopted as such.
ORDER
IT IS HEREBY ORDERED:
The decision of the Board to adopt the Discovering Series is remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
Dated this 4th day of February, 2010.

Melissa Westbrook has more.
Seattle Math Group Press Release:

Judge Julie Spector today announced her finding of “arbitrary and capricious” in the Seattle School Board’s May 6 vote to adopt the Discovering Math series of high school texts despite insufficient evidence of the series’ effectiveness.
Judge Spector’s decision states, “The court finds, based upon a review of the entire administrative record, that there is insufficient evidence for any reasonable Board member to approve the selection of the Discovering series.”
Plaintiffs DaZanne Porter, an African American and mother of a 9th-grade student in Seattle Public Schools, Martha McLaren, retired Seattle math teacher and grandparent of a Seattle Public Schools fifth grader, and Cliff Mass, professor of atmospheric science at the University of Washington, had filed their appeal of the Board’s controversial decision on June 5th, 2009. The hearing was held on Tuesday, January 26th, 2010

Alabama Governor Riley enlists help from Washington on charter school legislation

Mary Orndorff:

U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan is expected to travel to Alabama next month to help Gov. Bob Riley persuade lawmakers to pass legislation allowing charter schools, Riley said Wednesday.
“As a Republican I’ve always pushed for charter schools . . . but when I say it, it doesn’t have the legitimacy and credibility that the secretary of education and president of the United States has,” Riley said after meeting with Duncan Wednesday afternoon in Washington.
President Obama’s administration is preparing to hand out more than $4 billion to help states improve their public schools, and those without charter schools — like Alabama — are at a competitive disadvantage for the money.

How Unions Work

Megan McArdle:

In a valiant attempt to defuse the ideological conflicts between the reformist and traditionalist wings of the liberal education wonketariat, Matthew Yglesias argues that this disagreement is not not ideological at all. Rather, it is an artifact of past decisions about educational structure:

Take, for example, the hot issue of teacher compensation. The traditionalist view is that teachers should get paid more for having more years of experience and also for having more degrees. The reform view is that teachers should get paid more for having demonstrated efficacy in raising student test scores. This is an important debate, but I think it’s really not an ideological debate at all. I think the only reason it’s taken on an ideological air is that unions have a view on the matter and people do have ideological opinions about unions in general. But if we found a place where for decades teachers had been paid based on demonstrated efficacy in raising student test scores, then veteran teachers and union leaders would probably be people who liked that system and didn’t want to change to a degree-based system. Because unions are controversial, this would take on a certain left-right ideological atmosphere but it’s all very contingent.

This is a very interesting thesis, but ultimately I think it’s wrong. There is a reason that unions kill merit pay, and it’s not because they just happened to solidify in an era when merit pay was out of fashion.

12 local schools on state’s ‘worst’ list

Jennifer Smith Richards:

Twelve central Ohio schools are among the worst 5 percent statewide.
Their academic struggles mean they are eligible to receive federal money to help them transform or start over. A list of these schools was released yesterday by the Ohio Department of Education.
Six Columbus City Schools buildings are on the list of the worst-off, as are four in Cleveland and 16 in Cincinnati. Several charter schools — six of them in central Ohio — also made the “top” rung on the list.
“No one is going to like the fact that they’re on this list,” said Mark Real, who heads the Columbus-based nonprofit KidsOhio, which studies education issues. He’s been monitoring stimulus-related spending and improvement programs. “But this is not just a ‘label and leave it’ approach. These schools are in for some pretty intensive care.”
These schools all have a large number of poor students and have been mired in academic difficulties for several years.

Wisconsin Starts Process to Withhold Funds from the Milwaukee Public Schools

Erin Richards:

Wisconsin’s Superintendent of Public Instruction took the first formal step Thursday toward withholding millions of dollars from Milwaukee Public Schools because of the district’s failure to show progress on improvement actions ordered by the state.
Superintendent Tony Evers officially notified the district that he would seek to “reduce to zero” all administrative funds and defer all programmatic funds that MPS currently receives to serve low-income children, unless the district could prove that it’s made progress in key areas of its corrective action plan.
“I don’t believe appropriate progress has been made in benchmark areas,” Evers said in an interview. “I can’t stand by and wait any longer.”
The state issued corrective action orders to MPS last summer because of the district’s failure to make adequate yearly progress on state test scores for five consecutive years under the No Child Left Behind law.

Top step teacher pay limits budget options

Russell Moore:

There’s not much young blood in the Warwick school system and according to a top administrator – that’s costly.
There are currently 1,051 teachers in the Warwick School Department. Out of those teachers, 865 – or 82 percent of the department – rank in the top three “steps”.
All things considered, those highest paid teachers earned an average of $75,400 last year – according to Rosemary Healey, the school department’s Director of Compliance. That number represents compensation but excludes benefits such as health care and pensions.
Those 865 teachers earned a combined pay of $65,220,792.36. The school department’s total budget this fiscal year, which runs from July 1 until June 30 of this year, is just under $170 million.
The number includes a teacher’s base pay, longevity, and stipends paid to teachers for having attained various educational achievements – including a Master’s Degree or Doctorate, or advanced certifications.

The Soft Shoe of School Board/Union Negotiations

New Jersey Left Behind:

The Asbury Park Press slams the Marlboro Board of Education for taking a hard line with the local teachers union during contract negotiations and then, apparently, folding after two years of an escalating impasse. If only it were that simple.
Here’s how it works in N.J.: as the end of a typically-three-year contract approaches, a school board, represented by an attorney, and the local NJEA chapter, represented by NJEA reps, exchange proposals and proceed with negotiating everything from minor changes in contract language to salary increases and contributions (or not) to health benefits. If the two sides reach an impasse (usually once they hit salary and benefits, but sometimes over a seemingly insurmountable semantic technicality), they call in a state-appointed mediator who proposes a compromise. If one or both sides reject the compromise, they go to a state-appointed fact-finder who recommends a settlement. (Here’s Marlboro’s fact-finder’s report.) If that doesn’t work, they go to someone called a super conciliator, who writes up a lengthy resolution to the impasse. None of these interventions are binding.

Utah Bill to prohibit paid union leave clears committee

Lisa Schencker:

A bill that would prohibit school districts from paying the salaries of teachers who leave the classroom to engage in union activities cleared its first legislative hurdle Tuesday.
Several Utah school districts now pay a portion of their local union presidents’ salaries even though they no longer teach, and the union pays the rest of their salaries according to contract agreements. Sen. Margaret Dayton’s bill, SB77, would prohibit districts from paying those on association leave and require that if a teacher or employee leaves “regular school responsibilities” for association or union duties that the employee, association or union reimburse the district for that time.
Dayton said the bill is about “keeping taxpayer dollars allocated for education in the classroom.”
Others, however, opposed the bill, saying the decision should be left up to local districts. Local union presidents have said that many of their duties, such as representing teachers on district committees and resolving conflicts, benefit both the union and the district.
“The functions [they] carry out are things the district would have to have people do or reassign staff to do,” said Susan Kuziak, of the Utah Education Association.

Madison High School 2010-2011 Course Catalogs

via a kind reader’s email:

The Big Picture on School Performance

Sam Chaltain:

On Feb. 1, President Obama vowed to toss out the nation’s current school accountability system and replace it with a more balanced scorecard of school performance that looks at student growth and school progress.
I love the idea. Mr. Obama and education secretary Arne Duncan have repeatedly criticized the No Child Left Behind Act for keeping the “goals loose but the steps tight.” On their watch, both men aspire to introduce a new law that keeps the “goals tight but the steps loose.”
With that more flexible standard in mind, I have a scorecard to propose: the ABC’s of School Success. It provides both structure and freedom by identifying five universal measurement categories — Achievement, Balance, Climate, Democratic Practices and Equity — and letting individual schools chose which data points to track under each category.
1. ACHIEVEMENT
If there is a bottom line in schools today, it’s that educators must do whatever it takes to help close the achievement gap and improve student learning. To do so effectively and fully, schools must expand their measures for determining student achievement. After all, “achievement” isn’t only about student test scores; it’s also about other factors. The following are all critical to achievement:

Madison School District 2010-2011 Budget: Comments in a Vacuum?

TJ Mertz comments on Monday evening’s Madison School Board 2010-2011 budget discussion (video – the budget discussion begins about 170 minutes into the meeting). The discussion largely covered potential property tax increases. However and unfortunately, I’ve not seen a document that includes total revenue projections for 2010-2011.
The District’s Administration’s last public total 2009-2010 revenue disclosure ($418,415,780) was in October 2009.
Property tax revenue is one part of the MMSD’s budget picture. State and Federal redistributed tax dollars are another big part. The now dead “citizens budget” was a useful effort to provide more transparency to the public. I hope that the Board pushes for a complete picture before any further substantive budget discussions. Finally, the Administration promised program reviews as part of the “Strategic Planning Process” and the recent referendum (“breathing room”). The documents released to date do not include any substantive program review budget items.
Ed Hughes (about 190 minutes): “it is worth noting that evening if we taxed to the max and I don’t think we’ll do that, the total expenditures for the school District will be less than we were projecting during the referendum“. The documents published, as far as I can tell, on the school board’s website do not reflect 2010-2011 total spending.
Links to Madison School District spending since 2007 (the referendum Ed mentioned was in 2008)

It would be great to see a year over year spending comparison from the District, including future projections.
Further, the recent “State of the District” document [566K PDF] includes only the “instructional” portion of the District’s budget. There are no references to the $418,415,780 total budget number provided in the October 26, 2009 “Budget Amendment and Tax Levy Adoption document [1.1MB PDF]. Given the organization’s mission and the fact that it is a taxpayer supported and governed entity, the document should include a simple “citizen’s budget” financial summary. The budget numbers remind me of current Madison School Board member Ed Hughes’ very useful 2005 quote:

This points up one of the frustrating aspects of trying to follow school issues in Madison: the recurring feeling that a quoted speaker – and it can be someone from the administration, or MTI, or the occasional school board member – believes that the audience for an assertion is composed entirely of idiots.

In my view, while some things within our local public schools have become a bit more transparent (open enrollment, fine arts, math, TAG), others, unfortunately, like the budget, have become much less. This is not good.
Ed, Lucy and Arlene thankfully mentioned that the Board needs to have the full picture before proceeding.

Wisconsin’s Race to the Top Application

via a kind reader’s email: 14MB PDF:

January 15, 2010 Dear Secretary Duncan:
On behalf of Wisconsin’s school children, we are pleased to present to you our application for the US Department of Education’s Race to the Top program. We were honored when President Obama traveled to Wisconsin to announce his vision for this vital program and we are ready to accept the President’s challenge to make education America’s mission.
We are proud of the steps we are taking to align our assessments with high standards, foster effective teachers and leaders, raise student achievement and transform our lowest performing schools. Over the last several months Wisconsin has pushed an educational reform agenda that has brought together over 430 Wisconsin school districts and charter schools together around these central themes.
Race to the Top funding will be instrumental in supporting and accelerating Wisconsin’s education agenda. While Wisconsin has great students, parents, teachers and leaders we recognize that more must be done to ensure that our students are prepared to compete in a global economy. The strong application presented to you today does just that.
Wisconsin’s application contains aggressive goals supported by a comprehensive plan. These goals are targeted at not only high performing schools and students but also address our lowest performers. For example, over the next four years Wisconsin, with your support, is on track to:

Ensure all of our children are proficient in math and reading.
Drastically reduce the number of high school dropouts.
Increase the high school graduation growth rate for Native American, African American and Hispanic students.
Significantly increase the annual growth in college entrance in 2010 and maintain that level of growth over the next four years.
Drastically cut our achievement gap.

These goals are supported by a comprehensive plan with a high degree of accountability. Our plan is focused on research proven advancements that tackle many of the challenges facing Wisconsin schools. Advancements such as the following:

Raising standards — joined consortium with 48 other states to develop and adopt internationally benchmarked standards.
More useful assessments — changes to our testing process to provide more meaningful information to teachers and parents.
Expanded data systems — including the ability to tie students to teachers so that we can ultimately learn what works and what doesn’t in education.
More support for teachers — both for new teachers through mentoring and for other teachers through coaching.
Increased capacity at the state and regional level to assist with instructional improvement efforts including providing training for coaches and mentors.
An emphasis on providing additional supports, particularly in early childhood and middle school to high school transition, to ensure that Wisconsin narrows its achievement gap and raises overall achievement.
Turning around our lowest performing schools — enhancing the capacity for Milwaukee Public Schools and the state to support that effort; contracting out to external organizations with research-proven track records where appropriate.
Providing wraparound services, complimenting school efforts in specific neighborhoods in Milwaukee to get low income children the supports necessary to succeed within and outside the school yard.
Investing in STEM — Building off our currently successful Science, Mathematics, Engineering and Technology efforts to ensure that more students have access to high-quality STEM courses and training.

The agenda that you have before you is one that builds on our great successes yet recognizes that we can and must do more to ensure our children are prepared for success. We appreciate your consideration of Wisconsin’s strong commitment to this mission. We look forward to joining President Obama and you in America’s Race to the Top.

Sincerely, Jim Doyle
Governor
Tony Evers
State Superintendent

Stanford’s effort to curb alcohol abuse grows

John Wildermuth:

Stanford’s successful effort to exempt itself from Santa Clara County’s new rules on underage drinking has put a focus on the university’s growing effort to curb alcohol abuse on campus.
The county’s new ordinance, which took effect last year, makes it easier for police to cite anyone hosting a party where underage drinking occurs. It can mean a fine of up to $1,000 plus costs anytime the police are called in.
About 95 percent of Stanford’s 6,600 undergraduates, many of them younger than 21, live on campus in university-owned housing. As the landlord, the school could have found itself facing plenty of potential liability under the new county rules.
But the financial question didn’t play a role in the university’s attempt to persuade county officials to free Stanford from the regulations, said Jean McCown, the school’s director of community relations.

Minnesota superintendent candidate holding four public meetings this week

Tom Weber:

The woman being tapped to run the Minneapolis School District will take part in four meetings this week to meet the community.
Bernadeia Johnson has been an administrator in Minneapolis for a few years – most recently as deputy superintendent. These meetings will be the first time she faces the public as the only candidate for the top job after current superintendent Bill Green retires in June.
The school board announced earlier this month that Johnson was its only candidate for the job. She had long been considered a leading candidate, but the move still surprised some people for its suddenness. It means Minneapolis won’t conduct a national search or even consider a list of a few semi-finalists, as St. Paul did last year.

Education reform’s ‘Race to the Top’ features some non-starters

Kevin Huffman:

In the brave new world of data-driven education reform, most states have learned how to talk the talk. Start with “global competitiveness,” add in some “longitudinal data” and “transparency,” garnish with “accountability” and serve.
But far fewer states are committed to more than the language of reform — a reality made clear by the applications submitted last week to President Obama’s Race to the Top grant program.
Race to the Top is the crown jewel of the Obama administration’s education reform agenda and the largest-ever discretionary federal grant program for public schools. (In his State of the Union address this week, the president proposed adding an additional $1.4 billion to the pot of $4.35 billion.) The hope is that fiscally strapped states will make changes to ineffective policies and present comprehensive reform plans to be competitive for grants of up to $700 million. Indeed, Education Secretary Arne Duncan says that around a dozen states have changed laws or policies in response to the program thus far.

NEA’s New Math Miscues

Mike Antonucci:

Last Friday, NEA heralded the release of its annual Rankings & Estimates report by sending out a press release (embargoed until today) that claimed "inflation over the past decade has outpaced teachers’ salaries in every single state across the country." This didn’t sound right to researcher Jay P. Greene, so he scrutinized the report and couldn’t find a single statistic to back up this claim. On the contrary, NEA’s numbers revealed that teachers’ salaries had increased 3.4 percent over the past decade, after adjusting for inflation.

Georgia Governor’s race 2010: Jeff Chapman on education

Maureen Downey:

All the candidates for governor are being invited to share their education views with Get Schooled readers. As each piece comes in and is published here, it will be added to a category called Governor 2010. I urge you to read all the pieces.
Here is what GOP candidate Jeff Chapman submitted:
By Jeff Chapman
It is a fact of life that today’s children must have access to a first-rate education if they are to acquire the skills and knowledge needed to compete successfully in a modern, technological society.
It is also true that the quality of education in America, Georgia included, has, in too many cases, not kept pace with the demands of an increasingly complex world. High drop-out rates, low scores on achievement tests and poor classroom discipline are just some of the signs indicating that we must do better in preparing today’s youth for success in college and the workforce.
What are some of the steps we could take to promote quality education and help ensure that every Georgia student has the opportunity to succeed?

Enrolling the world’s poorest children in school needs new thinking, not just more money from taxpayers

The Economist:

DAWN has just broken but classes have already started at the village school in Aqualaar, in the Garissa district of Kenya’s arid north-east. Around 30 children, mostly from families of Somali herders, sit listening as an enthusiastic 18-year-old teacher, Ibrahim Hussein, gives an arithmetic lesson. The school is really little more than a sandy patch of ground under an acacia tree. Mr Hussein’s blackboard hangs from its branches. There are no desks or chairs. Pupils follow the lesson by using sticks to scratch numbers in the sand.
The lack of basic kit is only too typical of schools in poor countries. What is unusual, sadly, is that Mr Hussein was actually present and teaching when his school was visited by Kevin Watkins, the lead author of “Reaching the Marginalised”, a new report on education in the developing world by UNESCO.
In India, for example, research by the World Bank reveals that 25% of teachers in government-run schools are away on any given day; of those present, only half were actually teaching when the bank’s researchers made spot checks. That is dreadful but not unusual: teacher absenteeism rates are around 20% in rural Kenya, 27% in Uganda and 14% in Ecuador.

Crazy-quilt democracy in action in Tuesday vote on L.A. Unified school reform

Howard Blume:

Voters Tuesday will choose reform plans for 30 Los Angeles-area schools in an election like no other.
For one thing, the voting age could dip to 14. Undocumented residents are welcome. Some people will get multiple votes. Ballot stuffing is expected.
And did we mention that each contestant will actually be competing in seven simultaneous elections? And that the results could be meaningless?
Whoever said democracy is messy could have been thinking of the Los Angeles Unified School District.
The subject of the election is singular: Groups inside and outside the school system are competing to run 12 persistently low-performing schools and 18 new campuses. The purpose of the balloting is for different voting blocs to select their favored bidder. Each bloc will be tallied separately, including parents, high school students and school employees.

A Talk with Ellie Schatz: WCATY Founder and Author of “Grandma Says It’s Good to be Smart”

I enjoyed meeting and talking with Ellie Schatz recently. Listen to the conversation via this 17MB mp3 audio file CTRL-Click to download or read the transcript. Parent and activist Schatz founded WCATY and is, most recently author of “Grandma Says it’s Good to Be Smart“.
I enjoyed visiting with Ellie and found the conversation quite illuminating. Here’s a useful segment from the 37 minute interview:

Jim: What’s the best, most effective education model these days? Obviously, there are traditional schools. There are virtual schools. There are chartered schools. There are magnets. And then there’s the complete open-enrollment thing. Milwaukee has it, where the kids can go wherever they want, public or private, and the taxes follow.
Ellie: [32:52] I think there’s no one best model from the standpoint of those models that you just named. [32:59] What is important within any one of those models is that a key player in making that education available to your child believes that no matter how good the curriculum, no matter how good the model, the children they are about to serve are different, that children are not alike.
[33:30] And that they will have to make differences in the curriculum and in the way the learning takes place for different children.
[33:45] And I have experienced that myself. I’ve served on the boards of several private schools here in the city, and I have given that message: “This may be an excellent curriculum, and I believe it’s an excellent curriculum. But that’s not enough.”
[34:05] You cannot just sit this curriculum down in front of every child in the classroom and say, “We’re going to turn the pages at the same time, and we’re going to write the answers in the same way.” It does not work that way. You must believe in individually paced education.
[34:24] And that’s why I say the WCATY model cannot change. If it’s going to accomplish what I set out for WCATY to do, it must be accelerated from the nature of most of the curriculum that exists out there for kids today.

Thanks to Rick Kiley for arranging this conversation.

Virtual Schools, Students with IEPs, and Wisconsin Open Enrollment

Chan Stroman:

Virtual schooling can be an educational choice with particular benefits for some students with disabilities. The recent study “Serving Students with Disabilities in State-level Virtual K-12 Public School Programs” by Eve Müller, Ph.D., published in September 2009 by the National Association of State Directors of Special Education (NASDSE)’s Project Forum, and funded by the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Special Education Programs, surveyed state education agencies nationwide regarding their virtual K-12 public school programs:

Eleven states described one or more benefits associated with serving students with disabilities in virtual K-12 public school programs. These include:

New Jersey State Finances & K-12 Tax & Spending

Governor Tom Kean & Governor Brendan Byrne:

Q: The governor’s advisory panels made a number of recommendations, including a possible freeze on the salaries of teachers and other public employees. Given that contracts are involved, could this be done?
BYRNE: We have to get over this attitude of “not on my back.” We have to get it across that everybody has to make sacrifices in order to make this work. It’s not going to if all hell breaks loose every time you try to eliminate one fireman. It’s not going to be easy.
KEAN: I don’t think people yet have an understanding of how bad things are.
Comprehending a $10 billion-$12 billion deficit in a $30 billion budget is difficult, if not impossible. Everybody is going to be making sacrifices, not just scattered employees.
BYRNE: It’s nice being in Washington for a day, where the talk is in trillions.
Q: Politically speaking, is taking on the teachers and state employees a fight worth considering simply because of the message it sends?
KEAN: We haven’t any choice. We have wonderful public employees, but they get paid more than anybody in the country in similar positions. We simply can’t afford to do that anymore.
BYRNE: People think this is a minor problem, and it isn’t.
KEAN: In previous years, governors and legislators have been able to paper over the problem. They’ve done so irresponsibly, by increasing debt to much more than it ought to be. Now this is coming home to roost, and we’ve all got to deal with it.
BYRNE: And that will include cutting things that are dear to our hearts, and that’s tough.

Spending on education Investing in brains

The Economist:

IN CALIFORNIA the students are revolting–not against their teachers, but in sympathy with them. The state’s governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, has cut $1 billion, some 20% of the University of California’s budget, as he tries to balance the state’s books. Fees may rise by a fifth, to over $10,000. Support staff are being fired; academics must take unpaid leave.
That is part of a global picture in which cash-strapped governments in the rich world are scrutinising the nearly 5% of GDP they devote to education. Those budgets may not be the top candidates for the chop, but they cannot fully escape it.
Just before Christmas the British government said it planned to reduce spending on higher education, science and research by £600m ($980m) by 2012-13, just as a chilly job market is sending students scurrying to do more and longer courses. The trade union that represents academic staff claims that up to 30 universities could close with the loss of 14,000 jobs. A House of Commons select committee is investigating the effects on British science.
Even where education spending has not been slashed, it may face a squeeze as short-term stimulus spending ends. America’s $787 billion Recovery Act passed by Congress nearly a year ago included $100 billion for education. More than half is to be spent this year, meaning that the budget will have to be cut in 2011. A study by the Centre for the Study of Education Policy at Illinois State University, published on January 18th, found that half of American states will have spent all of their stimulus money for education by the end of July. Cuts will follow. Privately funded schools and colleges have seen their endowments and donors’ enthusiasm wither.

K-12 Tax & Spending Climate: Watch state spend wildly at new website

Steve Contorno:

The state’s budget mess is a ticking time bomb and now Illinois residents can watch as it explodes.
A Web site launched by the Civic Committee of the Commercial Club of Chicago displays a ticker that counts up Illinois’ debt. On Friday evening, the number was around $128,586,300,000 and swiftly on the rise.
The Web site IllinoisIsBroke.com keeps track of the state’s growing deficit.
The civic committee isn’t in the business of political endorsements, so don’t ask them who those candidates are. However, President Eden Martin said he hopes voters take a better look at the individuals running for office.
“If there’s a kind of public irritation that becomes strong enough, I think there would be enough support for fundamental reforms,” Martin said.
Martin blamed changes to the pension system in 1995 that put Illinois on a path toward bankruptcy. To fix the problem, the committee proposes the state reform pensions so they are comparable to the private sector, meaning fewer benefits, a later retirement age and a less generous cost-of-living adjustment.
But Martin knows that’s no easy task and understands why some politicians prefer the status quo.

Ailing Schools Turn to Voters for Help

Joe Barrett:

The housing boom has left the sprawling school district based in this former rail town on the Little Miami River with gleaming new buildings and a dilemma over how to keep them funded.
Three times in the past 15 months, voters have rejected levies that would have kept the Little Miami School District in the black. Each time, the district fell further behind and had to ask for more. On Tuesday, voters will face the biggest request yet–a new real-estate tax that amounts to $519 per $100,000 of assessed value, nearly twice the rate rejected in November.
Backers say the levy, combined with already deep cuts, is the only way to prevent a fiscal emergency that would force a state takeover of the schools. “It’s the downturn of an entire community. People are going to start looking at moving and your property value is going to go through the floor,” said Julie Salmons Perelman, a 44-year-old part-time veterinary technician with three children in the schools, who sat stuffing bags filled with campaign literature one morning last week.
Bill Nicholson, 54, a longtime opponent of the levies, calls the rising requests in the face of repeated rejections “insanity.” In the past, he has argued on behalf of people with fixed incomes, but he recently lost his own job as a consultant in the perfume industry. “How can I cut a budget of zero” to pay more taxes, he asked.

Who Owns Student Work?

Meredith Davis:

A number of years ago, curious about the ownership of student work produced in a class, I asked a lawyer friend who specializes in art and design copyright law if schools had the right to reproduce student work in their recruitment publicity without the students’ permission. He informed me that the student, despite advice from faculty who may have shaped the work, owns the work and that written permission must be secured before it could be reproduced. He also said such works could be considered student records and recruitment results in some benefit to the institution that exceeds any reading of the “fair use” practices of educational institutions (i.e. those that might be applied to the use of lecture slides for a class).
This reading of the law is at odds with the prevailing opinion of many schools that the student would not have produced work of a particular quality under his or her own resources, and therefore, that faculty have some “ownership rights” in the output of any class. Since that time I have been very careful to ask students first about any public use of their work, even in lectures I give at other schools, and I always credit the work with their names and give students the details on the presentation venues for their resumes. My lawyer friend told me that statements in college catalogs claiming that the institution retains ownership of work produced in a class wouldn’t hold up in court; unless the maker is an employee of the institution/company or has signed away rights through some explicit agreement, ownership is retained by the maker. Other attorneys may have different interpretations, and I don’t profess to be a legal expert, but the ownership of work produced by students is certainly something to think about.

Obama Plan Calls for Education-Funding Increase

Neil King, Jr.:

President Barack Obama’s 2011 budget proposes to boost education spending 9% to advance its overhaul of federal school-funding policy that has emerged as a rare patch of common ground for the administration and some Republicans.
At the same time, Mr. Obama is using his 2011 Education Department budget proposal to signal plans to revamp the Bush Administration’s No Child Left Behind policies, which have stirred opposition from some teachers and school administrators. Mr. Obama states his intention to scrap the Bush-era accountability standards for a new system to be negotiated with Congress. Administration officials say that talks with Congress on how to revamp the No Child law remain preliminary.
Most of the additional $4.5 billion in spending proposed for the Education Department is slated to fund competitive programs, making the budget a key part of an administration bid to transform how local school officials interact with the federal government.

Finding the Better High School

Jay Matthews:

On the second page of the Post’s Metro section, and on this Web site, you see the results of the 12th annual Washington Post survey of high school student participation in college-level tests, what I call the Challenge Index.
The ranked list of public schools — both the Washington area version in the Post and the national version in Newsweek each June — gets lots of attention, but the outrage and acclaim usually swirls around the issue of whether ranking schools is good for you. With much support from Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate teachers around the country, I think it is. But how can you use it?
I invented the list to show that some schools in good neighborhoods don’t deserve their great reputations, and some schools in poor neighborhoods don’t deserve their terrible ones. Opening up AP and IB courses to everyone who wants to work hard — the philosophy of the teachers who inspired me to do this — is a relatively new idea. Ten years ago, most schools in the United States did not let students take these courses unless they had strong grade point averages or teachers’ recommendations.

Nokia, Pearson Set Up Digital Education Joint Venture In China

Robin Wauters:

Nokia and education company Pearson have formed a joint venture in China dubbed Beijing Mobiledu Technologies to grow MobilEdu, the wireless education service that the Finnish mobile giant launched in China back in 2007.
Mobiledu is a mobile service that essentially provides English-language learning materials and other educational content, from a variety of content providers, directly to mobile phones.
Customers can access the content through an application preloaded on new Nokia handsets, or by visiting the service’s mobile website and most other WAP portals in China.
According to Nokia, Mobiledu has attracted 20 million subscribers in China so far, with 1.5 million people actively using the service each month. According to the press release and by mouth of John Fallon, Chief Executive of Pearson’s International Education business, China is the world’s largest mobile phone market and the country with the largest number of people learning English.

There are many ways to learn, not all of them require traditional methods or expensive “professional development”.

K-12 Tax & Spending Climate: “We are So Screwed”

John Mauldin:

So should we, as Paul Krugman suggests, spend another trillion in stimulus if it helps growth? No, because, as I have written for a very long time, and will focus on in future weeks, increased deficits and rising debt-to-GDP is a long-term losing proposition. It simply puts off what will be a reckoning that will be even worse, with yet higher debt levels. You cannot borrow your way out of a debt crisis.
This Time Is Different
While I was in Europe, and flying back, I had the great pleasure of reading This Time is Different, by Carmen M. Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff, on my new Kindle, courtesy of Fred Fern.
I am going to be writing about and quoting from this book for several weeks. It is a very important work, as it gives us the first really comprehensive analysis of financial crises. I highlighted more pages than in any book in recent memory (easy to do on the Kindle, and even easier to find the highlights). Rather than offering up theories on how to deal with the current financial crisis, the authors show us what happened in over 250 historical crises in 66 countries. And they offer some very clear ideas on how this current crisis might play out. Sadly, the lesson is not a happy one. There are no good endings once you start down a deleveraging path. As I have been writing for several years, we now are faced with choosing from among several bad choices, some being worse than others. This Time is Different offers up some ideas as to which are the worst choices.
If you are a serious student of economics, you should read this book. If you want to get a sense of the problems we face, the authors conveniently summarize the situation in chapters 13-16, purposefully allowing people to get the main points without drilling into the mountain of details they provide. Get the book at a 45% discount at Amazon.com.
Buy it with the excellent book I am now reading, Wall Street Revalued, and get free shipping.

Madison School District Infinite Campus Usage Report

Kurt Kiefer & Lisa Wachtel [1.4MB PDF]:

This report summarizes data on the use of Infinite Campus teacher tools and the Parent and Student Portal. Data come from a survey conducted among all teachers responsible for students within the Infinite Campus system and an analysis of the Infinite Campus data base. Below are highlights from the report.

About half of all middle and high school teachers responsible for providing grades to students are using the grade book tool.
Grade book use has declined over the past year at the middle school level due to the introduction of standards- based grading. In addition to the change in grading approach, the grade book tool in Infinite Campus does not handle standards-based grading as efficiently as traditional grading.
Lesson Planner and Grade book use is most common among World Languages, Physical Education, and Science teachers and less common among fine arts and language arts/reading teachers.
Grade book and other tool use is most common among teachers with less than three years of teaching experience.
Seventy percent of teachers responding to the survey within these years of experience category report using the tools compared with about half of all other experience categories.
Most of the other teacher tools within Infinite Campus, e.g., Messenger, Newsletters, reports, etc., are not being used due to a lack o!familiarity with them.
Many teachers expressed interest in learning about how they can use other digital tools such as the Moodie leaming management system, blogs, wikis, and Drupal web pages.
About one third of parents with high school stUdents use the Infinite Campus Parent Portal. Slightly less than 30 percent of parents of middle school students use the Portal. Having just been introduced to elementary schools this fall, slightly more that ten percent of parents of students at this level use the Portal.
Parents of white students are more likely to use the Portal than are parents of students within other racial/ethnic subgroups.
About half of all high school students have used the Portal at one time this school year. About one in five middle school students have used the Portal this year.
Variation in student portal use is wide across the middle and high schools.

Follow up is planned during January 2010 with staff on how we can address some of the issues related to enhancing the use olthese tools among staff, parents, and stUdents. This report is scheduled to be provided to the Board of Education in February 2010.

Much more on Infinite Campus and the Madison School District here.

2010-2011 Madison School District Budget Projection, Identifies $587,000 in Efficiencies to date from the 2009-2010 $418,415,780 Budget

Superintendent Dan Nerad 80K PDF.:

In November of 2008 the district was given voter approval for a three year operating referendum: $5 million in 2009-2010, $4 million in 2010-2011, and $4 million in 2011-2012. The approved operating referendum has a shared cost plan between property tax payers and the district.
During the fall adoption of the 2009-2010 budget the Board of Education worked to reduce the impact for property tax payers by eliminating costs and utilizing fund balance. The State 2009- 2011 budget impacted the district funding significantly in the fall of 2009-2010 and will again have an impact on the 2010-2011 projections.
The district and PMA Financial Network, Inc., worked to prepare a financial forecast for 2010- 2011.

The $3.8 trillion budget blueprint President Obama plans to submit to Congress on Monday calls for billions of dollars in new spending to combat persistently high unemployment and bolster a battered middle class. But it also would slash funding for hundreds of programs and raise taxes on banks and the wealthy to help rein in soaring budget deficits, according to congressional sources and others with knowledge of the document.
To put people back to work, Obama proposes to spend about $100 billion immediately on a jobs bill that would include tax cuts for small businesses, social safety net programs and aid to state and local governments. To reduce deficits, he would impose new fees on some of the nation’s largest banks and permit a range of tax cuts to expire for families earning more than $250,000 a year, in addition to freezing non-security spending for three years.
Despite those efforts, the White House expects the annual gap between spending and revenue to approach a record $1.6 trillion this year as the government continues to dig out from the worst recession in more than a generation, according to congressional sources. The red ink would recede to $1.3 trillion in 2011, but remain persistently high for years to come under Obama’s policies.

US lessons on education spending

Mike Baker:

British education may be down in the dumps over government spending prospects, but in the US the picture is rather different.
This week President Barack Obama announced a big cash boost for schools and for university students.
In his state of the union address, President Obama announced a $4bn (£2.5bn) increase in federal spending on elementary and secondary schools.
That is a rise of over six per cent, one of the biggest rises for years.
He also announced an even bigger cash increase in student aid to provide more federal grants for poor students and to ease the impact of student debt repayment.
In future, graduates in the US will be “forgiven” their outstanding federal loan debt after 20 years or, if they enter public service, after 10 years.

Fewer A’s and B’s for New York City Schools

Sabrina Jaszi:

The Economic Benefits From Halving The Dropout Rate: A Boom To Businesses In The Nation’s Largest Metropolitan Areas

Alliance for Excellent Education:

Few people realize the impact that high school dropouts have on a community’s economic, social, and civic health.
Business owners and residents–in particular, those without school-aged children–may not be aware that they have much at stake in the success of their local high schools.
Indeed, everyone–from car dealers and realtors to bank managers and local business owners–benefits when more students graduate from high school.
Nationally, more than seven thousand students become dropouts every school day. That adds up to almost 1.3 million students annually who will not graduate from high school with their peers as scheduled. In addition to the moral imperative to provide every student with an equal opportunity to pursue the American dream, there is also an economic argument for helping more students graduate from high school.
To better understand the various economic benefits that a particular community could expect if it were to reduce its number of high school dropouts, the Alliance for Excellent Education (the Alliance), with the generous support of State Farm®, analyzed the local economies of the nation’s fifty largest cities and their surrounding areas. Using a
sophisticated economic model developed by Economic Modeling Specialists Inc., an Idaho-based economics firm specializing in socioeconomic impact tools, the Alliance calculated economic projections tailored to each of these metro regions.

Advocating a Wisconsin Sales Tax Increase for K-12 Public Schools

Gayle Worland:

Tom Beebe has an idea for raising $850 million a year for Wisconsin schools, easing property taxes for homeowners and buying some time to devise a long-term solution to the state’s Byzantine school funding system — raise the state’s 5 percent sales tax by 1 percentage point.
It might not be politically viable. But supporters say at least it’s an idea.
“The conversation has to start somewhere,” said Dan Nerad, Madison School District superintendent. “There needs to be a public policy discussion about important questions around the school funding formula.”
The executive director of the Wisconsin Alliance for Excellent Schools, Beebe is the driving force — literally — behind the “A Penny for Kids” campaign. Since summer, he has logged nearly a thousand miles a month, he said, in a low-key, grass-roots campaign focused mainly in rural areas of the state. An online petition has garnered about 1,760 signatures.

Wisconsin k-12 redistributed tax dollars grew substantially over the past two decades as the chart below indicates: . More here.

Green Bay Schools Advertise to Stem Losses

Matt Smith:

The Green Bay Area Public School District is losing students to open enrollment by a three-to-one ratio. Now, during a pivotal few weeks, it’s launching a major multi-media campaign.
Statewide, applications for open enrollment begin Monday and run through the first part of February.
For school districts everywhere, it’s a critical time to keep — and gain — students.
The Green Bay district is wasting no time in getting its message out. From the classroom to your TV screen, it’s an all-out multi-media blitz to highlight the district during a very vulnerable few weeks.
Beginning Monday, a TV ad hits the airwaves advertising what the Green Bay school district says it can offer current and potential students.

Current Madison Superintendent Dan Nerad formerly served in the same position in Green Bay. Much more on open enrollment here.

Discussing Rigor at Seattle’s Rainier Beach High School

Michael Rice:

I was reading the comments in an earlier post about the new assignment plan and there were many comments about the rigor or lack there of at Rainier Beach High School. I would like to dispel the myth that Rainier Beach does not offer rigor to the high achieving student. If you have a high achieving 8th grader and are in the RBHS attendance area, here is just a sample of what you can expect:
In math as a Freshman, you will start in at least Honors Geometry with Ms. Lessig who is our best math teacher. Once you get through that, you will take Honors Advanced Algebra with me, then Pre Calculus with Mr. Bird (a math major in college) and then as a Senior, you take AP Calculus with Ms. Day, a highly experienced and skilled teacher. As a bonus, in either your Junior or Senior year, you get to take AP Statistics with me. All of these classes are demanding and well taught by teachers who know what they are doing and are passionate about teaching math.

Education does not need giveaways and gimmicks

South China Morning Post:

Few know the consequences of Hong Kong’s rapidly ageing population as well as public schoolteachers. They are in the front line, wondering how to keep the schools they work for open – and their jobs – as student numbers dwindle. Innovation comes to the fore in such situations and competition to maintain enrolments to stave off closure with gifts and gimmicks is keen. But as much as enterprise is to be lauded, efforts should not be about enticing children with giveaways, but better educating them. Education is not the natural first thought for teachers whose jobs are on the line. They know that when student numbers in a form drop below 61, the Education Bureau starts taking action. In the past five years, five public secondary schools and 72 primary ones have been forced to close. A total of 31 secondary classes have been cut this academic year.
Government-subsidised secondary schools have taken a lead in trying to reverse the trend. They cannot conjure more students from the shrinking pool but can lure them away from one another and look to new arrivals. Tactics vary from handing out free notebook computers to recruiting through booths at railway stations to hiring public relations consultants so that images can be overhauled.

New federal budget ups spending on education

Tom Weber:

One area of the federal government that could see more money is education as the president is proposing to spend as much as $4 billion more nationally next year on schools.
With state funding at a standstill and facing possible cuts, the prospect of any new money for schools gives the federal government more power in setting the terms.
Even $4 billion more from the federal government will not change the fact that the nation’s schools get a lion’s share of their money from their states.
But state budgets are pinched — Minnesota’s deficit tops a billion dollars – and that’s just for the remaining five months on this current fiscal year.
The Lakeville district’s budget is 80 percent state money, and Superintendent Gary Amoroso predicts that portion will stay flat for at least four years. Even as costs for things like health care and teacher pay keep increasing.

Fake News About Milwaukee Mayoral Takeover

Bruce Murphy, via a kind reader’s email:

A story in last week’s Shepherd Express claimed that Wall Street hedge managers are part of a secret conspiracy favoring mayoral takeover of Milwaukee Public Schools in order to privatize the schools. It’s complete nonsense, the sort of fake news that any smart reader will see through.
The key people pushing for mayoral takeover of the schools has been no secret: It includes Gov. Jim Doyle, Mayor Tom Barrett, Common Council President Willie Hines and a
number of Milwaukee-area Democratic legislators, including state Sens. Lena Taylor and Jeff Plale and state Reps. Jason Fields and Rep. Jon Richards. None of them have offered any support for privatization in their statements. Nor does the proposed legislation have any language that would in any way privatize the schools.

POLITICO Interview: Arne Duncan

Mike Allen:

MR. ALLEN: Welcome to POLITICO’s video series: “Inside Obama’s Washington.” I’m Mike Allen, Chief White House Correspondent, and we’re here at the Education Department with its leader, Arne Duncan. Mr. Secretary, thank you for having us in.
SECRETARY DUNCAN: Well, thanks for the opportunity. Good to see you.
MR. ALLEN: The President has announced a freeze for a big slice of spending. How’s that going to affect education?
SECRETARY DUNCAN: Well, education’s always been a priority for the President, so we feel very, very good about where we’re going to net out. We’re always going to make tough choices, and things that aren’t working, we’re going to stop investing in. But things that are working, we want to continue to push very hard.
MR. ALLEN: And what’s an example of something where you believe you can pull back, something that’s not working?
SECRETARY DUNCAN: Well, the budget will be forthcoming next week, but there will be a number of things where if we’re not seeing the results we want for children, we think we have a moral obligation not to just perpetuate the status quo, but to invest scarce, scarce dollars in those priorities that are really making a difference in students’ lives.

L.A. groups bid to run 30 schools

Howard Blume:

So you think you can run a Los Angeles school? Make your case. You’ve got 10 minutes.
Would-be school operators are taking part in a kind of Los Angeles Unified School District reality contest, presenting proposals this month at forums on campuses across the district.
It’s the next step in an unfolding process through which groups inside and outside the system are bidding to operate 12 low-performing schools and 18 new campuses, serving some 40,000 students.
The Board of Education approved the strategy in August, and the winners for each school will be chosen before March.
Amid intense competition, the bidders are determined to add popular support to their portfolios. Parents will vote for their favorite bidders, although their choices won’t be binding on district officials.
At Jefferson High south of downtown, at least 400 people braved last week’s storms to hear staff members offer their plans for revamping the campus. They are competing against L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa’s team.

Our Flagship Universities Are Straying From Their Public Mission

The Education Trust:

Public flagship universities provide excellence to students who cannot afford high-quality private institutions. Yet many of these universities direct aid to wealthy students who will attend college without it. Meantime, many high-achieving minority and poor students wind up in lesser institutions or do not attend college at all. In fact, some low-income students who literally cannot afford to attend college without a grant must find a way to finance the equivalent of 70 percent of their family’s annual income. Some flagships are stepping up to the challenge and focusing on access and success. An account of their performance and progress appears at the end of this report.

Newcomers Test Schools In Plano, Texas, Population Shift Prompts Rezoning That Angers Many Parents

Ana Campoy:

This Dallas suburb, a wealthy enclave known for its top-notch schools, is struggling to integrate a flood of poor, minority students.
In a battle mirrored in other districts across the U.S., parents here have been fighting for months over which public high school their kids will attend: one under construction in an affluent corner of the Plano Independent School District, or an older school several miles away in the city’s more diverse downtown.
Last month, the district’s school board angered many parents when it created a Pac-Man-shaped zone that placed their children in the downtown school for grades nine and 10 instead of in the newer, closer campus.
The downtown school has the highest proportion of poor students of all high schools in the district; many are Hispanic and African-American.
“We want to go to our neighborhood school,” said Kelly McBrayer, a white, 48-year-old stay-at-home mother of three who lives near the site of the new high school.

Excellent education: a right or a privilege?

Erica Sandberg:

Being deeply entrenched in all things money, I see first-hand the link between quality education and real, lasting economic success. The better schools you attend, the greater the chance you’ll find and prepare for work that will provide satisfaction and financial stability. This is not to say that other factors (such as parent involvement) don’t count or that some people don’t overcome the odds and attain wealth and happiness without attending or graduating from college, but I’m talking the basics here: kindergarten though high school.
The sad fact is that California public schools are in jeopardy. Many are wonderful now, but as the Chron’s Jill Tucker reports, 113 million in funding cuts over two years will change all that. Teachers are facing lay-offs, class size will swell to unmanageable numbers, and programs that make schools appealing to students will be slashed. Want to make kids dislike and devalue formal learning? This will do it. And as a society, we can’t afford to have children reject education. Those who do are more likely to make poor financial and lifestyle choices when they reach adulthood, draining the resources of the population at large.

Response to Danny Westneat 1/27 Math column in Seattle Times

Martha McLaren:

I am one of the three plaintiffs in the math textbook appeal. I am also the white grandmother of an SPS fifth grader, and a retired SPS math teacher.
Mr. Westneat grants that the textbooks we are opposing may be “lousy,” but he faults us for citing their disproportionate effect on ethnic, racial, and other minorities. He states that we can’t prove this claim. I disagree, and West Seattle Dan has posted voluminous statistics in response to the column. They support our claim that inquiry-based texts, which have now accrued a sizable track record, are generally associated with declining achievement among most students and with a widening achievement gap between middle class whites and minorities.
We’ve brought race and ethnicity (as well as economic status) into this appeal because there is ample evidence that it is a factor. True, this is not the 80’s, and true, in my 10 years of experience teaching in Seattle Schools, I found no evidence that people of color are less capable than whites of being outstanding learners. However, in my 30+ years as a parent and grandparent of SPS students and my years as a teacher, I’ve developed deep, broad, awareness of the ways that centuries of societally mandated racism play out in our classrooms, even in this era of Barack Obama’s presidency.

Next Bunch of Obama Education Reforms to Offer More Carrots

Patrice Wingert:

When the Obama administration first proposed having states duke it out for a share of a $4 billion education-reform fund, critics expected the whole enterprise to either be largely ignored or dissolve into political infighting. But instead, the Race to the Top competition has proved so successful in motivating states to accelerate their education-reform efforts that the administration has new plans to offer such competitions on an annual basis. President Obama will also announce tonight that the Department of Education will be offering a new competition to push states to create more and better preschool programs. During a briefing Tuesday, Education Secretary Arne Duncan said that the country doesn’t “need any more studies” to prove that high-quality preschool education can significantly close the achievement gap between rich and poor. Instead, he said, the country just needs to offer such programs to more kids. The president “wants to dramatically increase access and give kids a level playing field,” Duncan said. “If kids don’t come to school ready to learn and ready to read, it’s very tough for even the best kindergarten teachers to close that gap.” During the presidential campaign, Obama repeatedly promised that he would expand early education programs but has focused little attention on the issue during his first year.

The Real Issue Behind the Rhee Flap: Why Can’t Schools Fire Bad Teachers?

Patrice Wingert:

Michelle Rhee, the tough-talking D.C. schools chancellor, is used to taking her lumps from the press, the teachers’ unions, and city politicians as she tries to overhaul one of the nation’s worst public-school systems. But this week she’s been under siege after a controversial quote about teachers molesting students made it into print. Rhee is fighting back, but the whole episode highlights a bigger problem in districts all over the country: why can’t a school system fire teachers who abuse kids or don’t bother showing up for work? In D.C., as in many other cities with “progressive” employee discipline procedures, school officials can suspend such teachers but can’t terminate them.
The latest uproar began with the publication of a short “update” item in the Feb. 1 issue of Fast Company, in which Rhee seemed to say that the 266 teachers laid off last fall during the system’s budget crunch had histories of abusing students, corporal punishment, and chronic absenteeism: “I got rid of teachers who had hit children, who had had sex with children, who had missed 78 days of school. Why wouldn’t we take those things into consideration?” Rhee is quoted as saying.

How Michigan education reforms will unfold is unclear

Julie Mack:

How sweeping education reforms signed into law Monday will be implemented in Michigan remains unclear to area school officials.
Gov. Jennifer Granholm on Monday signed reforms that make it easier to close failing schools, link teacher pay to performance and hold school administrators accountable. The bills also raise the dropout age from 16 to 18, starting with the Class of 2016; allow up to 32 more charter schools to open each year; give professionals from areas other than education an alternative way to become teachers, and allow for cyber-schools to educate students who have dropped out online.
State Superintendent Mike Flanagan said up to 200 low-performing schools could end up under state control as a result of the new laws.
The legislation is part of Michigan’s effort to win money from the Obama administration’s Race to the Top competition tied to education reform. Michigan could get up to $400 million if it’s among the winners.
Local school boards and unions now face a Thursday deadline to sign a “Memorandum of Understanding” that indicates their support for the reforms. The memorandums are to be included with the state’s Race to the Top application. School districts where the board and union do not sign an agreement risk losing their share of the money.

On Seattle’s “Discovery Math” Lawsuit: “Textbook argument divides us”

Danny Westneat:

Can an algebra textbook be racist?
That’s what was argued Tuesday in a Seattle courtroom. Not overtly racist in that a book of equations and problem sets contains hatred or intolerance of others. But that its existence — its adoption for use in Seattle classrooms — is keeping some folks down.
“We’re on untested ground here,” admitted Keith Scully.
He’s the attorney who advanced this theory in a lawsuit challenging Seattle Public Schools’ choice of the Discovering series of math textbooks last year.
The appeal was brought by a handful of Seattle residents, including UW atmospheric-sciences professor Cliff Mass. It says Seattle’s new math books — and a “fuzzy” curriculum they represent — are harmful enough to racial and other minorities that they violate the state constitution’s guarantee of an equal education.
It also says the School Board’s choice of the books was arbitrary.
Mostly, Mass just says the new textbooks stink. For everyone. But he believes they will widen the achievement gap between whites and some minority groups, specifically blacks and students with limited English skills.

Fix schools with ideas, not money

Jay Matthews:

President Obama is apparently about to tell the nation he wants to freeze federal spending for three years in several areas, including education. I like the idea. I would also support cutting back entitlement payments for financially secure geezers like me, and find ways for everyone to make some sacrifices for our country.
I can hear the objections. We can’t fix our economy by shortchanging our kids. They are our future. True, but we don’t have much evidence that spending more money on their schooling has had much effect on what they have learned. The most exciting and productive schools I have studied are driven by ideas, not bucks. If they need money for special projects, they find it. But the power of their teaching comes from the freedom they are allowed to help with their students, as a team, in ways that make the most sense to them.
More money often prevents that from happening. It has strings that force teachers to do stuff, and spend time on paperwork, that doesn’t work for them. The recent history of the stimulus funds used for education makes this clear.

I agree.

What If Our Schools Are Working?

Alan Singer:

Thousands of protesters showed up at New York City’s Brooklyn Technical High School on January 26 to protest against the closing and reorganization of 19 public schools. Three hundred parents, teachers, students, and local politicians testified that the closings were arbitrary and ignored the struggles and successes taking place in these buildings. The hearing went on until after 2:30 in the morning, when the Panel for Educational Policy, whose majority is appointed by Mayor Michael “Money Bags” Bloomberg, did exactly what it planned to do at the start; it voted to rubber stamp the closings.
The panel’s decision will mean phasing out six comprehensive high schools, including Jamaica and Beach Channel in Queens, Paul Robeson and William Maxwell in Brooklyn, and Alfred Smith and Christopher Columbus in the Bronx. This is part of Bloomberg and Chancellor Klein’s campaign to replace the comprehensive high schools with small mini-schools and charters. Since 2002, Bloomberg/Klein has closed, or is in the process of closing, over ninety schools. What the Mayor and Chancellor were unable to explain was why if smaller schools are the panacea for educational problems six of the schools being closed in this round were small high schools created in previous rounds of school reorganization.

Cheat Sheet for New Jersey Governor Christie’s Educational Agenda

New Jersey Left Behind:

Here’s a Spark’s Notes version of Gov. Christie’s Education Subcommittee Report, which constitutes a list of recommendations to improve public education in N.J. Some are considered “early action,” i.e., to be completed within 90 days. The rest have a whopping 6 months for completion. Okay: maybe it’s more of a wish list, but it gives any reader a clear sense of Christie and Schundler’s agenda.
We’ve divided these 17 pages of pre-K through 12th grade recommendations (there’s another 8 on higher education) into 3 basic categories: School Finance, School Reform, and NJ DOE Oversight.
School Finance:

Criticism of Australia’s National School Comparison Website

Lucy Carter:

Independent policy think-tank the Grattan Institute has added to growing criticism of the Federal Government’s My School website, saying it will not give an adequate assessment of a school’s performance.
My School, scheduled to be launched tomorrow, has already come under heavy criticism.
The Education Union says it will unfairly stigmatise disadvantaged schools, and the Secondary Principals Council says it fails to include crucial data about school funding.
However, several parent groups have supported the proposal to provide information on school performance.
Federal Education Minister Julia Gillard says it will provide parents and the community with accurate information, allowing them to be their own judge.

Opinion: Obama’s Quiet Education Revolution

Kevin Teasley:

A week ago, President Obama announced that he is planning to spend $4.4 billion on his Race to the Top education program. If you missed the news, don’t kick yourself. Obama’s entire education reform plan had been largely overshadowed by the yearlong health care debate, the economy, Afghanistan and other big-ticket news items.
It’s unfortunate, since this may be the most impressive reform his administration has accomplished in the past year.
Obama announced Race to the Top in July. The program awards grant money to states on a competitive basis, based on their implementing education reforms that include assessment standards, turning around worst-performing schools, and recruiting and rewarding quality teachers.
Education Secretary Arne Duncan has met with education leaders throughout the country, working tirelessly to get state education leaders and providers, legislators, reform groups, unions and others to support reforms that will bring true accountability and competition to our nation’s public school systems.

Minnesota withholds payments to schools to pay the bills

Tom Weber:

School districts across Minnesota got word Tuesday that the state will withhold some of their funding in coming months.
Withholding payments will free up some of the state’s cash so it can pay its own bills. Today’s action is in addition to more than $1 billion in delayed payments to schools that were announced last summer.
School districts get their funding from the state in the form of twice-monthly payments.
Today’s move means both payments in March and one in April will be smaller than expected for many districts.
State finance officials predict they won’t have enough money in the bank during those months to meet their cash flow needs. So, the state will hold back a total of $423 million from schools. All of it will be paid back in May.

State of the Union on Education

Joe Williams:

Unfettered by inside-the-beltway partisan politics, President Obama indisputably has affected more change in the nation’s education policies in his first year in office than any President in modern history.
The boost that the Administration’s Race to the Top initiative – which was accompanied by a record $100 billion increase in general federal aid to education – has given state and local education reform efforts is the Administration’s biggest domestic policy success of 2009 – all without yet expending a dime of the $5 billion Race to the Top fund.
What’s more, while not a single Republican Congressman and only 3 Republican Senators voted for the economic and education reform stimulus package last February, the policy initiatives that Obama and Secretary Duncan put forth have since been embraced through both words and action by state and local elected officials in both parties across the ideological and geographical spectrum.
These accomplishments reflect campaign promises kept – in recognition of the relationship between education reform, jobs, and economic growth – to make education one of three key components of a long-term U.S. economic recovery strategy (the other two being energy and health care which obviously, and to say the least, have not fared as well), an augur well for the work on education reform that is yet to come.
Some effects are immediate – for example, more than a hundred thousand slots have already opened to parents across the country who want to choose a high quality public charter school for their children. Others, such as changes in state academic standards to ensure that students are college and career ready, the development of better tests, more rigorous qualification criteria and better pay for teachers, and fundamental overhauls of chronically failing schools, will pay dividends later this year, and over the next several.

2010 Madison School Board Election: Madison Teachers, Inc. Candidate Questionnaire

Beth Moss (running for re-election unopposed) 311K PDF.
James Howard (running against Tom Farley) 432K PDF.

Audio: The 2010 State of the Madison School District

39MB mp3 audio. I recorded this from Monday evening’s video stream. Unfortunately, the sound level was quite low. Notes and links on the 2010 State of the Madison School District here.
566K State of the District PDF.

K-12 Tax & Spending Climate: Federal Budget Freeze in the Works Effort to Curb Deficits Would Affect 17% of Budget; Defense, Medicare Exempt

Laura Meckler & Jonathan Weisman:

President Barack Obama intends to propose a three-year freeze in spending that accounts for one-sixth of the federal budget–a move meant to quell rising voter concern over the deficit but whose practical impact will be muted.
To attack the $1.4 trillion deficit, the White House will propose a three-year freeze on discretionary spending unrelated to the military, veterans, homeland security and international affairs, according to senior administration officials. Also untouched are big entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare.
The freeze would affect $447 billion in spending, or 17% of the total federal budget, and would likely be overtaken by growth in the untouched areas of discretionary spending. It’s designed to save $250 billion over the coming decade, compared to what would have been spent had this area been allowed to rise along with inflation.
The administration officials said the cap won’t be imposed across the board. Some areas would see cuts while others, including education and investments related to job creation, would realize increases.

‘Inconvenient Truth’ director turns to US education

AFP:

After his Oscar-winning “An Inconvenient Truth” spotlighted climate change, Davis Guggenheim is hoping to do for the US public education system what he did for the environment.
Guggenheim’s new film, “Waiting for Superman,” is vying for honors in the Sundance Film Festival’s US documentary competition, and offers a searing look at the problems facing schools and colleges in the United States.
Like the Oscar-winning “An Inconvenient Truth,” Guggenheim’s film utilizes graphs and animated charts intercut with interviews with students and educators to illustrate the sector’s woes.

New School Ecosystems

Tom Vander Ark:

There are interesting parallels between charter schools in the US and affordable private school in India. Both focus on the urban poor, promote choice, and often develop within an entrepreneurial ecosystem. Whether it’s New Orleans or Hyderabad, there are a dozen accelerants that promote access and quality:
1. Incubation support for new/existing operators with multi-campus potential. including planning support and seed funding (e.g., New School Venture Fund, Charter School Growth Fund, NY Charter School Center). Mumbai-based Dasra incubates social entrepreneurs but with limited access to seed capital.

New Jersey’s 2010 Race to the Top Application; 11 Wisconsin School Districts Don’t Participate

New Jersey Department of Education, 3MB PDF:

In New Jersey, we are proud to be ranked among the top 5 NAEP performers in reading, writing, and mathematics. We are proud to have invested so successfully in admired and effective early childhood programs, high-quality charter schools, and high school redesign. We are proud to see the success of our efforts.
However, while we are making inroads to close the achievement gap, we also recognize that more work is needed to prepare all of our students for the demands of the global economy. The existing minority achievement gaps and the gaps for economically-disadvantaged and non- disadvantaged students are unacceptable. There is an urgent need for these further reforms.
The landmark Abbot decisions over the last three decades in conjunction with the creation of the new school funding formula in 2008 solidified New Jersey’s commitment to equitable school resources and ensuring that all student sin the State have access to needed resources. Although this has been a significant step, we have not yet achieved outcomes commensurate with the State’s investments in education in all districts. Furthermore, we have not yet solved the problems of how to place great teachers and leaders in struggling schools and districts.

Scott Bauer:

Eleven Wisconsin school districts want nothing to do with a highly touted federal grant program that could direct thousands of dollars to their classrooms.
The districts were the only ones out of 425 that refused to take part in the state’s application to receive money under the nearly $4.5 billion Race to the Top grant program.
That means if Wisconsin is awarded the $254 million it seeks, the 11 districts won’t get a cut, and the money they would have gotten will go to the remaining schools.
That’s just fine with Mary Dean, administrator of the Maple Dale-Indian Hills School District just north of Milwaukee. She said the requirements under the state’s Race to the Top application were too onerous for her 500-student district to comply with, so instead of giving itself the option of declining to take part later, it decided not to participate at all.
“We really had too many questions, too many unknowns,” she said. “We thought the costs would outweigh the benefits.”

Berkeley High may cut lab classes to fund programs for struggling students

Marie L. La Ganga:

Trying to address a major ethnic and racial achievement gap, the school could divert funds from before- and after-school science labs filled mostly with white students. The plan has sparked debate.
Aaron Glimme’s Advanced Placement chemistry students straggle in, sleepy. It is 7:30 a.m. at Berkeley High School. The day doesn’t officially begin for another hour. They pull on safety goggles, measure out t-butyl alcohol and try to determine the molar mass of an unknown substance by measuring how much its freezing point decreases.
In the last school year, 82% of Berkeley’s AP chemistry students passed the rigorous exam, which gives college credit for high school work. The national passing rate is 55.2%. The school’s AP biology and physics students are even more successful.
Most districts would not argue with such a record, but Berkeley High’s science labs are embroiled in a debate over scarce resources with overtones of race, class and politics.
Campus leadership has proposed cutting before- and after-school labs — decreasing science instruction by 20% to 40% — and using that money to fund “equity” programs for struggling students in an effort to close one of the widest racial and ethnic achievement gaps in the state.

Related: English 10.

Values Statement for Seattle Teacher Contract Negotiations

Melissa Westbrook:

As I mentioned previously, for the past couple of months I have been part of a coalition group to form a joint values statement for parents/community groups to give to the School Board, district and SEA. The groups include Campana Quetzel, Seattle Council PTSA, Successful Schools in Action, CPPS, Stand for Children, the Alliance for Education and others. Organized by the League of Education Voters (our leader is Kelly Munn of LEV), we sought to create a streamlined document that is simple and basic.
Here’s a link to that document, “Give Every Child a Great Education: A Community Value Statement in Support of Public Schools”. We will have, at this writing, shown the document to nearly all the Board members, SEA leaders and school district leaders.
Here is a link to the district’s opening remarks about the negotiations.