Community Partners – Page 26 – School Information System

2nd Annual Wisconsin Charter Schools Awards Gala

Wisconsin Charter Schools Association via a Laurel Cavalluzzo email:

The 2nd Annual WCSA Awards Gala will take place on Friday, November 6th at Turner Hall Ballroom in Milwaukee. You don’t want to miss this special evening!
The Annual Awards Gala honors those individuals and schools that have made an impact on schools, teachers and students in Wisconsin’s charter school community.
The event will start at 6 p.m. with a “red carpet” meet and greet, and will continue with dinner and entertainment, with the exciting presentation of the 2009 Charter Schools Awards of Excellence and the premier of our new Charter School Video.

INTRODUCTION by Theodor Sizer

Volume One, Number One
The Concord Review, Fall 1988
Theodore Sizer: Professor of Education, Brown University Author, Horace’s Compromise, Horace’s School Chairman, Coalition of Essential Schools

Americans shamefully underestimate their adolescents. With often misdirected generosity, we offer them all sorts of opportunities and, at least for middle-class and affluent youths, the time and resources to take advantage of them.
We ask little in return. We expect little, and the young people sense this, and relax. The genially superficial is tolerated, save in areas where the high school students themselves have some control, in inter-scholastic athletics, sometimes in their part-time work, almost always in their socializing.
At least if and when they reflect about it, adolescents have cause to resent us old folks. We do not signal clear standards for many important areas of their lives, and we deny them the respect of high expectations. In a word, we are careless about them, and, not surprisingly, many are thus careless about themselves. “Me take on such a difficult and responsible task?” they query, “I’m just a kid!”
All sorts of young Americans are capable of solid, imaginative scholarship, and they exhibit it for us when we give them both the opportunity and a clear measure of the standard expected. Presented with this opportunity, young folk respond. The Concord Review is such an opportunity, a place for fine scholarship to be exhibited, to be exposed to that most exquisite of scholarly tests, wide publication.
The prospect of “exhibition” is provocative. I must show publicly that I know, that I have ideas, and that I can defend them resourcefully. My competence is not merely an affair between me and a soulless grading machine in Princeton, New Jersey. It is a very public act.
The Concord Review is, for the History-inclined high school student, what the best of secondary school theatre and music performances, athletics, and (in some respects) science fairs are, for their aficionados. It is a testing ground, and one of elegant style, taste and standards. The Review does not undersell students. It respects them. And in such respect is the fuel for excellence.

================
“Teach by Example”
Will Fitzhugh [founder]
Consortium for Varsity Academics® [2007]
The Concord Review [1987]
Ralph Waldo Emerson Prizes [1995]
National Writing Board [1998]
TCR Institute [2002]
730 Boston Post Road, Suite 24
Sudbury, Massachusetts 01776-3371 USA
978-443-0022; 800-331-5007
www.tcr.org; fitzhugh@tcr.org
Varsity Academics®

Success – Parent’s Advocacy Makes a Difference in Denver, North Carolina

Sara Bennett:

About a month ago, Deidra Hewitt, who lives in Denver, North Carolina, where she has two children in a public elementary school, wrote about how the school required her to sign off on her children’s homework more than 400 times a year. Today, she writes about what happened after she wrote to the school Superintendent to tell him about the policy. Read the background here.
Advocacy Can Make a Difference
by Deidra Hewitt
I emailed a letter to the school Superintendent and the Board of Education, regarding the “sign or your child will be punished” policies, that I find so offensive. The Superintendent contacted me for a meeting. I was really pleased with the outcome of this encounter. The Superintendent of Schools completely agreed with me, about parent signatures being voluntary. He was against children being held accountable for parent behavior. He indicated that changes were in the works. Starting at the county level, he advised me that the “accountability agreements” were being phased out, and that they will be gone next year. He stated that he is actively searching for ways to engage parents of disadvantaged students. He agrees that countless signatures do not accomplish this goal. He is prepared to investigate the objectives of requests for parent signatures, and certify that signatures are voluntary.

Tie teachers to testing in Wisconsin

Wisconsin State Journal Editorial:

Teachers routinely use test scores to help them evaluate their students.
Wisconsin schools should similarly use student test results to help them evaluate teachers.
Every other state except Nevada allows this.
Wisconsin should, too.
And if we don’t, our state won’t be eligible for any of the $4.5 billion in “Race to the Top” grants President Barack Obama plans to award starting next year.
That’s how important this reform is to the Democratic president.
Gov. Jim Doyle announced last week he’ll push to repeal a Wisconsin law preventing schools from using tests to help evaluate teacher performance.
The Legislature needs to move fast to nix this law because Wisconsin has only a few months to submit an application for some of the $4.5 billion in federal innovation grants.

Esther Wojcicki: Thousands of Kids Drop Out of High School Daily – How Are We Going to Solve the Problem?

Esther Wojcicki via a kind reader’s email:

On Tuesday and Wednesday this week, Sesame Workshop with Google and Common Sense Media are sponsoring Breakthrough Learning in a Digital Age, a conference of 200 thought leaders who will come together to discuss solutions to the literacy and dropout problems facing the nation. This blog focuses on the dropout crisis; the one yesterday focused on the literacy problems.

The dropout crisis is bigger than you might have guessed. While in some areas it has improved somewhat in the last year, in the country as a whole the problem is growing. Almost fifty percent of students in the fifty largest American cities drop out of high school. In some cities, there is over a seventy percent drop out rate.

A major consequence of the dropout rate is an increase in crime and and the prison rate. We spend more to keep prisoners in jail than we do to educate our students. Typical per-prisoner expenses run from $20,000-$50,000 per year while typical per pupil expenditures run from $7,000 to $20,000, averaging $9,000. This discrepancy needs to be addressed now and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan is trying to promote change through incentives in the $100 billion education stimulus package.

Schools putting the moves on hold

Carla Rivera:

Contracts have helped tone down the hyper-sexed dance floor at some campuses, giving students clear guidelines on what’s acceptable and what’s not.
Downey High School sent its homecoming queen packing, crown and all, after she was seen making sexually suggestive moves on the dance floor a few years back. Aliso Niguel High School Principal Charles Salter made good on a threat to cancel school dances in 2006 as officials there and elsewhere fretted over how to deal with freaking, grinding and other provocative dances.
Their solution: Fight explicit teen dancing with an equal dose of explicitness. Downey and Aliso Niguel are among the first schools to draft “dance contracts,” binding agreements that parents and students must sign before a teenager can step onto the dance floor.
Administrators say the graphic descriptions in the contracts leave little room for arguments over interpretation and put everyone on notice about appropriate behavior.
The prom09contract.pdf, for example, specifies “no touching breasts, buttocks or genitals. No straddling each others’ legs. Both feet on the floor.” Students get two warnings about sexually suggestive behavior before being booted without a refund and barred from other dances.

Major changes at 2 troubled D.C. schools

Jay Matthews:

After days of frantic blogging on the latest D.C. schools crisis and trading speculation with interested readers, I find it refreshing to visit three educators who are making major changes in two of the city’s lowest-performing high schools. Unlike me and many of the people I exchange comments with, they know what they are talking about.
George Leonard, 57, chief executive officer of the Friends of Bedford group from New York; Chief Financial Officer Bevon Thompson, 35; and Chief Operating Officer Niaka Gaston, 34, sit around a table in the basement of the District’s Dunbar High School. The school was so dark and filthy when they first saw it that they cringe at the memory.
Dunbar and Coolidge high schools, both educational disaster areas, are under the command of their consulting company. D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee handed them the keys to the two schools because of the rigor and high graduation rates they brought to a small public high school, the Bedford Academy, in a low-income neighborhood of Brooklyn.

Why We’re Failing Math and Science

Wall Street Journal:

The problem is well-known: The U.S. lags far behind other developed countries at the K-12 level in terms of measured performance in math and science courses.
What can be done to change that? The Wall Street Journal’s Alan Murray posed that question to three experts: Joel Klein, chancellor of the New York City Department of Education; Amy Gutmann, president of the University of Pennsylvania; and Christopher Edley Jr., dean of the law school at the University of California at Berkeley, who was also a member of the Obama administration transition team working on education issues.
Here are edited excerpts of their discussion:
It’s the Teachers
ALAN MURRAY: What will it take to get the American system up to the level of some of the other developed countries in terms of math and science education?
JOEL KLEIN: The most important thing is to bring to K-12 education college graduates who excel in math and science. Those countries that are doing best are recruiting their K-12 teachers from the top third of their college graduates. America is recruiting our teachers generally from the bottom third, and when you go into our high-needs communities, we’re clearly underserving them.
MR. MURRAY: How do you explain that? It doesn’t seem to be a function of money. We spend more than any of these other countries.
MR. KLEIN: We spend it irrationally. My favorite example is, I pay teachers, basically, based on length of service and a few courses that they take. And I can’t by contract pay math and science teachers more than I would pay other teachers in the system, even though at different price points I could attract very different people. We’ve got to use the money we have much more wisely, attract talent, reward excellence.

THE INFLUENCE GAME: Bill Gates sways govt dollars

Libby Quaid & Donna Blankinship:

The real secretary of education, the joke goes, is Bill Gates.
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has been the biggest player by far in the school reform movement, spending around $200 million a year on grants to elementary and secondary education.
Now the foundation is taking unprecedented steps to influence education policy, spending millions to influence how the federal government distributes $5 billion in grants to overhaul public schools.
The federal dollars are unprecedented, too.
President Barack Obama persuaded Congress to give him the money as part of the economic stimulus so he could try new ideas to fix an education system that most agree is failing. The foundation is offering $250,000 apiece to help states apply, so long as they agree with the foundation’s approach.
Obama and the Gates Foundation share some goals that not everyone embraces: paying teachers based on student test scores, among other measures of achievement; charter schools that operate independently of local school boards; and a set of common academic standards adopted by every state.

Parents: Fenger Is No Place for Our Kids

Nicola Orichuia:

The trouble at Fenger High School seems to never end.
A Far South Side community group is joining some parents in promoting a boycott of the school after several violent incidents among students.
“It’s a shame that a child is not safe inside that school,” parent Cassandra White-Robinson told WGN9 News.
The school was in the national spotlight in September, when 16-year-old honor roll student Derrion Albert was beaten to death just outside the school. A video of the Sept. 24 killing made national headlines and urged both Education Secretary Arne Duncan and Attorney General Eric Holder to address the issue of violence by visiting the Chicago school.

An Earthquake: Rhode Island School Superintendents Told To Abolish Teacher Seniority

Linda Borg:

Dropping a bombshell on the teachers’ unions, state Education Commissioner Deborah A. Gist ordered school superintendents to abolish the practice of assigning teachers based on how many years they have in the school system.
Gist, who sent a letter to superintendents on Tuesday, is upending tradition and taking on two powerful unions, the National Education Association Rhode Island and the Rhode Island Federation of Teachers and Health Professionals (RIFT), who together represent 12,000 public school teachers.
On Friday, the unions said they were blindsided by Gist’s announcement, adding that the commissioner made no attempt to confer with labor before going public with the decision.
“We’re going to court,” said Marcia Reback, president of the Federation of Teachers. “I’m startled that there was no conversation with the unions about this. I’m startled there were no public hearings, and I’m startled at the content. This narrows the scope of collective bargaining.”
Gist says she has the authority to do away with seniority under the new Basic Education Plan, which the Rhode Island Board of Regents approved in June and which takes effect July 1.

Makes sense…..
NBC10 has more.

Dyslexia Awareness Videos & We can and must help kids with dyslexia

Wisconsin Literacy:

To promote greater knowledge and understanding of dyslexia and related learning disabilities, The International Dyslexia Association (IDA) designated the month of October as National Dyslexia Awareness Month. “Awareness is key with learning disabilities because if identified early enough, their impacts can be minimized through intervention and effective teaching.”
In order to increase awareness of dyslexia, Wisconsin Literacy posted two videos on its website created by Sun Prairie Cable Access. You will need Quicktime installed on your computer to view the video files. Download it for free here: www.apple.com/quicktime/download.
Living and Learning with Dyslexia: Hope and Possibilities
(Time 36:59)
Dr. Julie Gocey leads a panel discussion on dyslexia with Cheryl Ward (Wisconsin Branch of the International Dyslexia Association), Layla Coleman (Wisconsin Literacy, Inc.), Pam Heyde (Dyslexia Reading Therapist) and Margery Katz (Dyslexia Reading Therapist). The program covers a variety of topics including science-based, multisensory instruction for kids and adults; obstacles for identifying individuals with dyslexia; and lack of training of teachers. A college student with dyslexia shares strategies for academic success.

Julie Gocey:

Educators, parents and health professionals must work together to improve literacy for ALL students in Wisconsin. It is well known that early literacy is one of the most powerful predictors of school success, gainful employment and many measures of health.
For that reason, the sincerest expression of child advocacy is to ensure that ALL students in Wisconsin have the opportunity to become proficient readers. In my experience as a pediatrician, co-founder of the Learning Difference Network, and as a parent, current policies and practices do not routinely provide the 10 percent to 17 percent of our students who have some degree of dyslexia with adequate opportunities for literacy.
Dyslexia is a language-based learning problem, or disability if severe. The impact that this neurobiological, highly heritable condition has on learning to read, write and spell cannot be underestimated.
Dyslexia is the best understood and most studied of all learning difficulties. There is clear evidence that the brains of dyslexic readers function differently than the brains of typical readers. But the good news is this: Reading instruction from highly skilled teachers or tutors who use evidence-based techniques can change how the brain processes print and nearly ALL students can become proficient readers.
Early intervention is critical to successful outcomes, but there is a disconnect between research and practice on many levels.
Current obstacles include myths about dyslexia, lack of early identification and a need for educators to be given training in the science of reading and multi-sensory, systematic, language-based instruction. This is critical for students with dyslexia, but can be beneficial to all learners. For those of us who are able to pay for private testing and instruction for our children, the outcomes can be phenomenal. Unfortunately, where poverty and its associated ills make daily life a struggle, this expert instruction is not routinely available.
Families who ask school personnel about dyslexia are often referred to a physician, who in turn sends them back to school for this educational problem. Educational testing is often denied coverage from insurance companies, though the implications for health and wellness are clear. Unfortunately, parents may be left without useful information from anyone, and appropriate treatment – excellent reading instruction – is further delayed.
October is Dyslexia Awareness Month. On Thursday, Oct. 22, there will be a noon rally in the Capitol rotunda to raise awareness about the need to improve reading instruction for students with dyslexia and for all struggling readers in Wisconsin.
State Rep. Keith Ripp, R-Lodi, is introducing bills this week to help identify and help children with dyslexia. One bill calls for screening for specific skills to find kids with a high chance of struggling to learn to read. The other bill aims to improve teacher training to deal with reading problems.
There is too much evidence describing the science of reading, dyslexia and the costs of illiteracy to continue without change. Parents who suspect dyslexia must not be dissuaded from advocating for their children; keep searching until you find help that works.
Health professionals must seek the latest information on this common condition in order to support families and evaluate for related conditions. Educators must seek out training to understand this brain-based condition that requires educational care. The information is solid. We must work together to give ALL our kids the opportunity to read and succeed.
Dr. Julie Gocey is a pediatrician and a clinical assistant professor in the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health and also a co-founder of the Learning Difference Network

via a Margery Katz email.

Are Teacher Colleges Turning out Mediocrity?

Gilbert Cruz:

There has been a mantra of sorts going around education circles over the past few years: “Nothing matters more to a child’s education than good teachers.” Anyone who’s ever had a Ms. Green or a Mr. Miller whom they remember fondly instinctively knows this to be true. And while “Who’s teaching my kid?” is an important question for parents to ask, there may be an equally essential (and rarely remarked upon) question — “Who’s teaching my kid’s teachers?”
On Thursday, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan went to Columbia University’s Teachers College, the oldest teacher-training school in the nation, and delivered a speech blasting the education schools that have trained the majority of the 3.2 million teachers working in U.S. public schools today. “By almost any standard, many if not most of the nation’s 1,450 schools, colleges and departments of education are doing a mediocre job of preparing teachers for the realities of the 21st century classroom,” he said to an audience of teaching students who listened with more curiosity than ire — this was Columbia University after all, and they knew Duncan wasn’t talking to them. It was a damning, but not unprecedented, assessment of teacher colleges, which have long been the stepchildren of the American university system and a frequent target of education reformers’ scorn over the past quarter-century.

DPI Superintendent as the Wisconsin Education Czar?

Amy Hetzner:

An effort has been launched in the state Capitol to give the state schools superintendent broader authority to turn around struggling schools and position Wisconsin to better compete for millions of dollars in federal education grants.
Little fanfare has accompanied potential legislative changes that would allow the superintendent of public instruction to order curriculum and personnel changes in chronically failing schools. It didn’t even make the news release for Gov. Jim Doyle’s three-city announcement on Monday of educational changes he is seeking to help Wisconsin qualify for some of the $4.35 billion in Race to the Top funds from the U.S. Department of Education.
State Sen. John Lehman (D-Racine), chairman of the Senate Education Committee, said the idea of giving the state superintendent “super-duper powers” has attracted support from legislators and educational interest groups since it first surfaced earlier this month.
“There’s getting to be general agreement around these interventions,” he said.

Prior to any expansion of the Wisconsin DPI’s powers, I’d like to see them implement a usable and rigorous assessment system to replace the oft-criticized WKCE.
Perhaps, this is simply politics chasing new federal tax dollars….

A look at Yakima, WA School Board Candidates

Adriana Janovich:

Two of the five seats on the Yakima School District Board of Directors are up for grabs this election.
Of the four candidates vying for those spots, three have served — or are serving — on the school board. Two are incumbents. Two are retired. One taught in the district for 30 years. Another taught in the district for just over eight.
All of them identify several key issues — making tough budget decisions, implementing the new Measurements of Student Progress and High School Proficiency exams, and coordinating upcoming construction projects, specifically replacing Eisenhower High School, modernizing Davis High School and renovating six other schools.
The construction will be paid for through a 20-year, $114 million bond measure approved by taxpayers in May.

Ruling on Quebec language law gives hope to immigrant parents

Less Perreaux & Kirk Makin:

Supreme Court strikes down law that has blocked children from attending English-language schools.
For thousands of francophone and immigrant parents in Quebec who want to send their children to English public schools but are barred from the system, a Supreme Court ruling Thursday seemed to offer hope.
“This is really wonderful news, it’s a great decision,” said Virender Singh Jamwal, one of the 25 parents who fought in court for seven years for the right to send their kids to school in English.
But in its attempt to reach a rare compromise in Quebec’s volatile language politics, the court may have managed to prick nationalist sentiment without doing much to protect Mr. Jamwal’s educational preference.
In a 7-0 decision, the court struck down a law known as Bill 104 that, since 2002, has blocked some 8,000 children in Montreal alone from attending English-language schools.

Regulating home schooling: An inspector calls

The Economist:

A SCHOOL headmaster once observed that he would regularly consult his prefects on the running of the establishment. When he agreed with them, he would allow their views to prevail. It was only when they disagreed that he had to impose his will. On October 19th the schools secretary, Ed Balls, closed a consultation, the outcome of which he seems to have decided already. Legislation will be introduced to force parents wishing to educate their children at home to register with the state and undergo regular inspections.
Mr Balls says he is worried that children who do not attend school risk being abused by those looking after them. An earlier review by Graham Badman, a former head of children’s services in Kent who is now based at London University’s Institute of Education, found that in some areas a disconcertingly high proportion of home-schooled children were known to social services–ie, cause for concern.
No one is sure how many children in Britain are taught at home. York Consulting, a management outfit, put the figure at 20,000 in 2007. It could actually be more than 50,000, reckons Mike Fortune-Wood, who runs a support service for parents educating their children at home, and the total may be rising by 10% a year.

Mississippi Task force to take on hot-button school district consolidation issue

Bobby Harrison:

A task force formed by the Legislature to improve underperforming schools has decided to take on the touchy subject of school district consolidation.
During a recent hearing of the task force, the story was told of an agency in the 1980s that had advocated Mississippi’s 152 school districts be consolidated into 82, basically along county lines. The task force was told, perhaps jokingly, that the agency was eliminated by the Legislature the next session.
Senate Education Chair Videt Carmichael, R-Meridian, the co-chair of the task force, responded, also perhaps jokingly, “I think I might disappear if consolidation happened in some of my school districts.”
For years, an array of groups has touted the virtue of school consolidation as a way to save money and increase efficiency in the public schools. The only problem has been finding agreement on how to do it.
“It’s been my observation everybody wants to consolidate everybody else’s district, but not their own,” said House Education Committee Chair Cecil Brown, D-Jackson, the other co-chair of the task force.

Community Background as the Madison School District Considers Further Property Tax Increases Monday Evening

The Monday, October 26, 2009 Madison School Board meeting agenda will include a discussion (and presumably a vote) on the upcoming property tax rate increases. The board approved a tax hike earlier this year to make up for a reduction in state income tax and fees redistributed to local school districts due to the “Great Recession”. Reductions in property tax assessments (“Of the 73,024 parcels in the City, 53.6% are being changed (6,438 increases and 32,728 reductions”) may further drive taxes upward, certainly a challenge given current conditions.
Superintendent Dan Nerad proposed – and passed – a three year referendum that authorized spending and tax increases while providing time for the Administration to, as Board member Ed Hughes stated “put into place the process we currently contemplate for reviewing our strategic priorities, establishing strategies and benchmarks, and aligning our resources.” Ed’s “Referendum News” is worth reading.
I’ve summarized a number of links from the 2008 referendum discussion and vote below.

A transcript of the Madison School Board’s July 28, 2008 referendum discussion. (including an mp3 audio file). The board approved the referendum on August 25, 2008 (minutes, many links)
Public hearing links.
The initial, public 2008/2009 budget contemplates a referendum decision.
A July 25, 2008 Wisconsin State Journal Editorial on the local property tax “bite”.
August 19, 2008: Superintendent Dan Nerad recommends a three year recurring referendum. That same day, Vicki McKenna and Don Severson discuss the referendum. Many notes and links.
Two forums set on the fall, 2008 referendum. Notes from those events.
Madison School District & Madison Teachers Union Reach Tentative Agreement: 3.93% Increase Year 1, 3.99% Year 2; Base Rate $33,242 Year 1, $33,575 Year 2: Requires 50% MTI 4K Members and will “Review the content and frequency of report cards”

It will be interesting to see what, if anything happens with the recent math, fine arts, talented and gifted task forces and the full implementation of “infinite campus“, which should reduce costs and improve services.

Tennessee’s Education Reform Plan

Richard Locker:

A statewide education reform commission headed by former U.S. Sen. Bill Frist issued its final recommendations today, with a goal of moving Tennessee to the top of the Southern states in K-12 education.
Search report cards
“The very simple goal is to make Tennessee – us, our kids – the best in the South in five years,” Frist said at a State Capitol event unveiling the report. “It’s a challenging, ambitious goal but it can be done.”
The recommendations of the bipartisan “State Collaborative on Reforming Education,” or SCORE, which Frist established early this year, includes 60 specific recommendations that revolve around four key “strategies:”
** Embracing the higher graduation standards that are about to go into effect as part of the Tennessee Diploma Project that aims at both raising standards and graduating more students. There has been some fear that when the impact of the more rigorous standards are felt, there will be political pressure on legislators to scale them back.
** Cultivating stronger school leaders, including superintendents and teachers.

Final Report: 2.4MB PDF.

Annual Report on Violence, Vandalism and Substance Abuse in New Jersey Public Schools

New Jersey Department of Education:

Purpose of the Report
The Commissioner’s annual report provides the Legislature with information reported by school districts concerning incidents of serious student misconduct grouped into the following four major reporting categories: violence, vandalism, weapons, and substance abuse. An analysis of trends yields indications of progress and of ongoing concern, and provides guidance to districts, other agencies, and the department as they endeavor to focus resources on areas of need. In the Programmatic Response section of this report, the department notifies the Legislature and the public of the actions taken by the State Board of Education and the Department of Education to address the problems evident in the data.
FINDINGS
The Findings section summarizes the data reported by districts over the Electronic Violence and Vandalism Reporting System (EVVRS). Districts are required to report incidents, as defined in the EVVRS, if they occur on school grounds during school hours, on a school bus, or at a school-sponsored event, using the Violence, Vandalism, and Substance Abuse (VV-SA) Incident Reporting Form in Appendix B. The reporting of this year’s findings is intended to be read in electronic format; the reader can link to figures that depict the findings described in the report. Paper copies of the figures may be found in Appendix C of the print version of this document. More detailed findings, i.e., district and school summary data, may be accessed at http://www.state.nj.us/education/schools/vandv/.

1.2MB PDF Complete Report

Islamic school in Madison eager to grow

Doug Erickson:

Just back from the frenzy of lunchtime recess, third-grader Amena Saleh donned a head scarf Wednesday and dropped to her knees at Madinah Academy of Madison, a full-time Islamic school on the city’s South Side.
Her prayer was one of five that are obligatory every day for Muslims but the only one that fell during school hours.
“We have a God who’s up in the sky and his name is Allah,” said Amena, 8, explaining the focus of her ritual.
At Madinah Academy, the educational program is grounded in Islam and guided by the Quran, the religion’s holy book. Now in its fifth year, the school serves 28 students in grades pre-kindergarten through three and is eager to add grade levels. It is housed in a strip mall at 1325 Greenway Cross, just off Fish Hatchery Road and near Madison’s border with Fitchburg.

Duncan to ed schools: End ‘mediocre’ training

Jay Matthews:

Education Secretary Arne Duncan, in prepared remarks circulating in advance of a speech Thursday, accuses many of the nation’s schools of education of doing “a mediocre job of preparing teachers for the realities of the 21st-century classroom.”
My colleague Nick Anderson, on the national education beat, and I found the advance text a meaty read.
Duncan’s speech, to be delivered at Columbia University, goes further than any other I can remember from an education secretary in ripping into the failure of education schools to ready teachers for the challenges of the day, particularly the demand for academic growth in all students.
Duncan’s speech points out two major deficiencies in education school teaching with which most critics would agree: They do a bad job teaching students how to manage disruptive classrooms, particularly in low-income neighborhoods, and they don’t offer much in the way of training new teachers how to use data to improve their classroom results.
The excerpts of the speech we were given, however, did not appear to address one part of the classroom management problem that is often raised when successful teachers explain how they learned to keep students in order. These teachers often say they learned by doing, by facing a class alone without help, trying one thing after another until something worked for them. Education school deans have been critical of the Teach for America program, which pushes recent college graduates into classrooms with only a few weeks training, but teachers who have survived that toss-them-into-the-water approach say it works better than class management classes at their teacher’s colleges.

Locally, the UW-Madison School of Education has been involved in many Madison School District initiatives.

Maryland Governor O’Malley urges School Superintendents to cut costs

Nelson Hernandez & John Wagner:

With Maryland facing a $2 billion budget shortfall next year, Gov. Martin O’Malley warned the chiefs of the state’s school systems Tuesday of hard times ahead, and the Senate president told them that they were “going to have to start taking a portion of the hit.”
Speaking in Annapolis to a gathering of the Public School Superintendents Association of Maryland, O’Malley (D) urged the heads of the county’s 24 school jurisdictions to find ways to save money but maintain the quality that earned the state a No. 1 ranking in a national survey by the Education Week trade newspaper.
O’Malley’s cost-saving suggestions included creating a school building design that could be used across the state, buying furniture from the state prison industry and installing solar panels on roofs to generate energy.
But he offered few specifics about what cuts the superintendents might expect in state funding even as he repeatedly stressed the challenge of chopping $2 billion from a $13 billion budget.

Memphis City Schools lines up donations worth $1.4 million for Merit Pay

Jane Roberts:

Memphis City Schools has signed short-term contracts worth $1.4 million with several consultants, including a local public relations agency, as the district moves toward merit pay for teachers and getting rid of those who miss the mark.
Supt. Kriner Cash quickly raised the capital from donors, including the Hyde Family Foundations, so work could begin Oct. 1.
The PR firm CS, on Union Avenue, got a $152,000 contract through June 30. The agency’s main job will be communicating with teachers, making sure the district’s message is clear and consistent, potentially warding off union strife.
The contracts are a prelude to a seven-year teacher improvement plan the district hopes to accomplish with nearly $100 million from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Gates will announce the winners of its national grants in early November. Memphis is one of five finalists.
Cash does not want to wait, saying Tuesday that “a lull in work like this can become the devil’s playground.

A Moo-Moo Here, and Better Test Scores Later

Javier Hernandez:

But it soon became clear that this was a field “study”– as the teachers called it — not a field “trip,” and the 75 Harlem kindergartners were going not only for a glimpse of rural life, but to rack up extra points on standardized tests.
“I want to get smarter,” 5-year-old Brandon Neal said.
“I want to do better on homework and tests,” added Julliana Jimenez, one of his classmates.
New York State’s English and math exams include several questions each year about livestock, crops and the other staples of the rural experience that some educators say flummox city children, whose knowledge of nature might begin and end at Central Park. On the state English test this year, for instance, third graders were asked questions relating to chickens and eggs. In math, they had to count sheep and horses.

Teaching for a Living: How Teachers See the Profession Today

Jean Johnson, Andrew Yarrow, Jonathan Rochkind and Amber Ott:

Two out of five of America’s 4 million K-12 teachers appear disheartened and disappointed about their jobs, while others express a variety of reasons for contentment with teaching and their current school environments, new research by Public Agenda and Learning Point Associates shows.
The nationwide study, “Teaching for a Living: How Teachers See the Profession Today,” whose results are being reported here for the first time, offers a comprehensive and nuanced look at how teachers differ in their perspectives on their profession, why they entered teaching, the atmosphere and leadership in their schools, the problems they face, their students and student outcomes, and ideas for reform. Taking a closer look at the nation’s teacher corps based on educators’ attitudes and motivations for teaching provides some notable implications for how to identify, retain, and support the most effective teachers, according to the researchers.
This portrait of American teachers, completed in time for the beginning of the 2009-10 school year, presents a new means for appraising the state of the profession at a time when school reform, approaches to teaching, and student achievement remain high on the nation’s agenda. It also comes as billions of economic-stimulus dollars pour into America’s schools focused on ensuring that effective teachers are distributed among all schools, and Congress will have to consider reauthorization or modification of the 2001 No Child Left Behind Act., the nearly 8-year-old latest version of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act.

Our Struggling Public Schools “A Critical, but unspoken reason for the Great Recession”

Tom Friedman via a kind reader’s email:

Last summer I attended a talk by Michelle Rhee, the dynamic chancellor of public schools in Washington. Just before the session began, a man came up, introduced himself as Todd Martin and whispered to me that what Rhee was about to speak about — our struggling public schools — was actually a critical, but unspoken, reason for the Great Recession.
There’s something to that. While the subprime mortgage mess involved a huge ethical breakdown on Wall Street, it coincided with an education breakdown on Main Street — precisely when technology and open borders were enabling so many more people to compete with Americans for middle-class jobs.
In our subprime era, we thought we could have the American dream — a house and yard — with nothing down. This version of the American dream was delivered not by improving education, productivity and savings, but by Wall Street alchemy and borrowed money from Asia.
A year ago, it all exploded. Now that we are picking up the pieces, we need to understand that it is not only our financial system that needs a reboot and an upgrade, but also our public school system. Otherwise, the jobless recovery won’t be just a passing phase, but our future.
“Our education failure is the largest contributing factor to the decline of the American worker’s global competitiveness, particularly at the middle and bottom ranges,” argued Martin, a former global executive with PepsiCo and Kraft Europe and now an international investor. “This loss of competitiveness has weakened the American worker’s production of wealth, precisely when technology brought global competition much closer to home. So over a decade, American workers have maintained their standard of living by borrowing and overconsuming vis-à-vis their real income. When the Great Recession wiped out all the credit and asset bubbles that made that overconsumption possible, it left too many American workers not only deeper in debt than ever, but out of a job and lacking the skills to compete globally.”

Madison Mayor Cieslewicz Visits Toki Middle School

Dave Ceislewicz:

One of my favorite events of the year is the annual Principal for a Day event organized by the Foundation for Madison’s Public Schools and sponsored by CUNA. For one thing, it’s an opportunity for me to use phrases like, “Hey, hey, no running in the halls!” and, “sure, it’s funny until somebody loses an eye.”
This year I chose to be the shadow principal at Toki Middle School. It’s no secret that Toki is at the center of a neighborhood that has been in the news in recent years in part because of some changing demographics. Those changes are apparent at the school where kids eligible for free and reduced lunches have increased from about a third to about half of the school population in just a few years.
But what I saw on a typical day where most of the kids didn’t know or care much who I was (just like a normal day around City Hall) was a school where a lot of learning was taking place. I visited Rhonda Chalone’s Student Leadership class, Vern Laufenberg’s Technology Class and Scott Mullee’s Science Class. I also spent some time with Principal Nicole Schaefer and her staff. What I witnessed was dedicated teachers and engaged students in a friendly and orderly atmosphere. And the diversity that is there is a big advantage, setting those kids up for success in a world that is, if anything, even more diverse than the student body at Toki.
Every school has some challenges, but anyone that doesn’t think Madison schools are doing a great job teaching our kids, should spend a day in one.

The southwest part of Madison, including Toki Middle School has had its share of challenges over the past few years.

Pedagogy Across Three Continents

Sarah Murray:

Aside from having capital Ps in their names, Pittsburgh, Prague and São Paolo might seem to have little in common.
The first has an industrial heritage as a US steel hub. The second, in central Europe and once part of the Soviet bloc, has an historic district that is a World Heritage Site, and the third, founded by Jesuit priests, is the capital of Brazil’s most populous state and one of the most dynamic cities in Latin America.
What links all three is the global executive MBA delivered by the Joseph M Katz Graduate School of Business at the University of Pittsburgh.
Katz has been running an EMBA programme since 1972, a time when Pittsburgh had one of the US’s highest number of Fortune 500 companies headquartered in the city. In 1990, the school started offering an EMBA programme in the Czech Republic, in Prague and, since 2000, in São Paolo, Brazil.
Until 2003, the three programmes operated as independent entities. Students from the Prague and Brazil campuses would come to Pittsburgh for two-week periods, but because they were at different stages in the curriculum, they did not interact with each other or with the other students from Pittsburgh.

School District maintains education on a small scale

Amy Hetzner:

The proverbial little red schoolhouse survives in the form of a brown brick building on the corner of W. Seven Mile Road and Highway 45 in Racine County.
Here at Drought School – the only school in the Norway School District – items from the eighth-grade bake sale sell for 25 to 75 cents each, the school administrator has been on the job for 20 years and the softball team can include students as young as third-graders.
There are advantages to the small school district in a 4-square-mile farmland oasis sandwiched between the urban Racine Unified School District and suburban Muskego-Norway School District.
But there also are downsides to this slice of rural life, preserved in small kindergarten-through-eighth-grade and high school districts in southeastern Wisconsin.
Last year, Norway’s resident enrollment hit 76, the end of a five-year slide in which it lost more than 40% of its population, according to state records.

Once Convicts’ Last Hope, Now a Students’ Advocate

John Schwartz:

“Pick your head up, buddy,” Tom Dunn said to Darius Nash, who had fallen asleep during the morning’s reading drills. “Sabrieon, sit down, buddy,” he called to a wandering boy. “Focus.”
Mr. Dunn’s classroom is less than three miles from his old law office, where he struggled to keep death row prisoners from the executioner’s needle. This summer, after serving hundreds of death row clients for 20 grinding, stressful years, he traded the courthouse for Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School.
The turmoil of middle school turns many teachers away, said the school’s principal, Danielle S. Battle. Students’ bodies and minds are changing, and disparities in learning abilities are playing out.
“A lot of people will say, ‘I’ll do anything but middle school,’ ” she said.
But this is precisely where Mr. Dunn chose to be, having seen too many people at the end of lives gone wrong, and wanting to keep these students from ending up like his former clients. He quotes Frederick Douglass: “It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.”

Washington, DC School Vouchers Have a Brighter Outlook in Congress

Robert Tomsho:

The District of Columbia’s embattled school-voucher program, which lawmakers appeared to have killed earlier this year, looks like it could still survive.
Congress voted in March not to fund the program, which provides certificates to pay for recipients’ private-school tuition, after the current school year. But after months of pro-voucher rallies, a television-advertising campaign and statements of support by local political leaders, backers say they are more confident about its prospects. Even some Democrats, many of whom have opposed voucher efforts, have been supportive.
At a congressional hearing last month, Sen. Dick Durbin, an Illinois Democrat and vocal critic of the program who heads the subcommittee that controls its funding, said he was open to supporting its continuation if certain changes were made. They include requiring voucher recipients to take the same achievement tests as public-school students.
The senator’s comments were a “really positive sign,” said Jeanne Allen, president of the Center for Education Reform, a group that supports vouchers and charter schools — public schools that can bypass many regulations that govern their traditional counterparts. “It’s clear the momentum is coming our way,” added Kevin Chavous, a former Washington city councilman who has appeared in television ads supporting the voucher plan, known as the Opportunity Scholarship Program.

Task force to develop Kentucky education strategy

Nancy Rodriguez:

In a move he says is meant to re-energize support for public education, Gov. Steve Beshear announced Monday the creation of a task force charged with developing a unified vision of what Kentucky schools need to offer to better prepare students for the 21st century.
“Our world has changed dramatically since the reforms of 1990,” Beshear said, during a press conference at Louisville Male High School, where he discussed the Transforming Education in Kentucky initiative. “We must now turn our focus to the future and again to our schools to ensure that our strategies and programs are designed to meet the challenges of the 21st century.”
Not all embraced Beshear’s task force, which is suppose to spend the next year developing recommendations on how to improve education in the state.
In a letter to the governor, Senate President David Williams, R-Burkesville, said he believed the task force “is duplicative” of education efforts already underway.
“I respectfully submit that it is past time for your administration to move beyond discussion and to immediate action,” Williams said, noting that topics on the task force’s agenda are already being discussed by legislative committees or have been the subject of legislative bills. “…These issues cannot be put off another year.”

A lesson in school lunch

Susan Troller:

“Eat the taco salad. It’s good.”
The reassuring comment came from a crowd of seventh-grade boys at Velma Hamilton Middle School as I prepared to eat my first school lunch in more than 40 years.
They politely made room for me at the front of a line that circled the cafeteria/multipurpose room, nodding enthusiastically as I took the salad. As a former food writer and restaurant critic newly returned to covering topics about children and education, I wanted to experience firsthand school lunches at Madison’s elementary, middle and high schools. Madison, like communities across the nation, is re-evaluating school meals with an eye toward making them more nutritious and appealing.
The taco salad featured finely shredded lettuce, providing a reasonably crisp bed for a mound of mildly seasoned ground beef; a dab of sour cream, a small plastic container of salsa and a small package of salty, tortilla chips completed the spread. It was the most popular purchased lunch option that day, although a majority of Hamilton’s sixth-, seventh- and eighth-graders appeared to have brought their own lunches. With a half-pint of milk, the meal cost $3.30 (adult full-price middle school lunch). I’d probably give it a grade of C+ or B-.

Community meeting to introduce the new Madison School District Talented and Gifted Plan

via a kind reader’s email:

Tuesday, November 17
6:00 – 7:30 p.m. (this is the correct time)
Hamilton Middle School LMC
4801 Waukesha Street
Madison, Wi
The Madison Metropolitan School District (MMSD) Talented and Gifted Division will host a community forum on November 17, 2009, from 6:00 to 7:30 p.m. Superintendent Dan Nerad and Director of Teaching and Learning Lisa Wachtel will be in attendance.
The focus of the forum will be to provide the Madison community with an overview of the recently Board of Education approved Talented and Gifted Education Plan, followed by an opportunity for discussion.
Link to new MMSD TAG Plan: http://tagweb.madison.k12.wi.us/
More information from MUAE: http://madisonunited.org/TAGplan.html

Teachers’ unions uneasy with Obama

Nia-Malika Henderson:

A skirmish between powerful teachers’ unions and President Barack Obama over nearly $5 billion in education spending is shaping up as a preview of the battle to come over No Child Left Behind in Congress early next year.
But the tables are turned: now the unions are worried that Obama, a Democratic ally, is going to be just as tough on them as President George W. Bush, a longtime foe.
The dispute adds teachers’ unions to a growing list of key Democratic constituencies that have been frustrated by Obama’s lunges toward the political middle, along with gay-rights activists upset Obama won’t lift the ban on gays in the military, and Latino officials who say Obama is slow-walking immigration reform.
So far, both the unions and Education Secretary Arne Duncan have tried to avoid a full-on collision, and the unions are showing new flexibility in accepting previously unheard-of moves like stricter teacher evaluations.
But they’re also making it clear they’ll only go so far with Obama, who was booed at two teachers’ union conventions when he was a candidate.

Madison high school students receive early finance lessons

Pamela Cotant:

In the Madison School District’s four large high schools last week, students were given checkbooks and profiles detailing their life circumstances such as marriage, children, education and employment. Students then visited stations for typical purchases such as housing, utilities, food, transportation, childcare and entertainment as they tried to stay within their budget. To challenge their decision-making, some students also experienced unexpected setbacks such as illness or unemployment.
“It’s really important to know what you are buying and how you are going to buy stuff, especially when the economy is down … and money is tight,” said Andy Yang, a La Follette High School senior.
About 1,400 students participated.
Volunteers from various businesses work at the stations, but bankruptcy trustees were missing this year because they couldn’t get away due to their heavy workloads.

Fairfax County Schools Propoze Second Year Wage Freeze due to Reduced Revenues in its $2,200,000,00 Budget; Where is Madison’s 2009/2010 Final Budget?

Michael Alison Chandler:

The Fairfax County School Board is bracing for the most dramatic reduction in services in more than 20 years as it attempts to bridge a projected $176 million budget shortfall with cuts that could extend to closing schools, increasing class size, ending summer school, discontinuing most full-day kindergarten classes and eliminating foreign language instruction in elementary schools.
Superintendent Jack D. Dale will not present a formal budget proposal until January, but school officials are releasing a list of potential cuts because they want to give the public the earliest possible look at the severity of this year’s deficit. “What we are trying to get people to understand is, you are all at risk this time,” said board member Jane K. Strauss (Dranesville), the budget chairwoman.
Board members say that classrooms are already strained from adjustments made over the past two years, including consecutive increases in class sizes.
The current budget is $18 million less than last year’s, and the school system has grown by about 5,000 students. Federal stimulus money helped offset even deeper cuts, but the school board still eliminated nearly 800 positions and reduced many program budgets.
This year, programs will probably be discontinued, said school board chairman Kathy L. Smith (Sully). “There is no trimming around the edges anymore,” she said.
In Fairfax, the projected $176 million shortfall assumes 2,000 new students, no increase in county funding and no pay increase for teachers or other staff. If approved, it would mean a second year of salary freezes.

Fairfax County Public Schools Budget Documents.
9/25/2009: Madison School District & Madison Teachers Union Reach Tentative Agreement: 3.93% Increase Year 1, 3.99% Year 2; Base Rate $33,242 Year 1, $33,575 Year 2: Requires 50% MTI 4K Members and will “Review the content and frequency of report cards”
Fairfax County Schools Approved 2009-2010 Approved Budget [8.9MB PDF]

It will be interesting to see the Madison School District’s “final” 2009/2010 budget, which will be reviewed and voted on by the local school board soon. The budget has, in the past, increased as the year progresses. The 2007/8 budget was $339,685,844; 2008/9 was $368,012,286, and the 2009/10 preliminary budget was 367,912,077, according to the MMSD “Financials” PDF Document).

United Teachers Los Angeles: Absent from reform

Los Angeles times Editorial:

t’s easy to see why United Teachers Los Angeles doesn’t like the new Public School Choice policy at L.A. Unified, which allows outside groups to apply to take over about 250 new or underperforming schools. Those groups are likely to include a large number of charter school operators that would hire their own teachers rather than sign a contract with the teachers union.
What’s less understandable is why UTLA would minimize its chances of keeping some of the schools within the district, along with their union jobs. Yet that’s what appears to be happening. A rift has developed within the union’s leadership over whether to allow more so-called pilot schools, and if so, how many and under what conditions. Pilot schools are similar to charter schools, except that they remain within L.A. Unified, staffed by the district’s union employees. The staff is given more independence to make instructional and budgeting decisions in exchange for greater accountability and “thin contracts,” which contain fewer of the prescriptive work rules that can stultify progress.

Pack children off to school as soon as you can

Barbara Ellen:

No one could argue that the Cambridge Primary Review, the biggest report on primary schools for over 40 years, isn’t a weighty-looking document. Six years to complete, 600 pages long, one of its main arguments is that British children are starting school far too early, around the four-year mark.
Terrible, cries the report. In the manner of most European countries, children should be starting school at around six years old, in Finland’s case, seven. Thereby enabling Britain to catch up in terms of child literacy, numeracy, and well-being. All of which sounds extremely exciting for British education. What a shame they forgot to factor in British parents.
Even today, when there is a report like this, we seem automatically to revert to a template of idealised British family life, circa 1955 (Mummy in her pinny, happily baking jam tarts; Daddy arriving home with his brolly) that has no bearing on modern reality.
Exchange the 1950s fantasy for parents who both have to work, and have other children to sort out. Parents, who already have to pick up, clean up, organise, and juggle, to the point where they feel as though they are trapped within a slow-motion nervous breakdown. And this is the middle class, relatively do-able, version. Into this engorged ready-to-blow scenario they want to introduce the concept of up to two to three years less primary schooling? Are they insane?

Harvard admits to $1.8b gaffe in cash holdings

Beth Healy:

Harvard University, one of the world’s richest educational institutions, stumbled into its financial crisis in part by breaking one of the most basic rules of corporate or family finance: Don’t gamble with the money you need to pay the daily bills.
The university disclosed yesterday that it had lost $1.8 billion in cash – money it relies on for the school’s everyday expenses – by investing it with its endowment fund, instead of keeping it in safe, bank-like accounts. The disclosure was made in the school’s annual report for the fiscal year that ended June 30.
Typically, companies and big institutions manage their cash conservatively in order to have it readily available, by keeping the money in such low-risk investments as money-market mutual funds.
But Harvard placed a large portion of its cash with Harvard Management Co., the entity that runs the university’s endowment and invests in stocks, hedge funds, and other risky assets. It has been widely reported that Harvard Management’s endowment investments were battered in the market crash – down 27 percent in its last fiscal year. Not revealed until yesterday was that the school’s basic cash portfolio had also been caught in the undertow.

K-12 Tax & Spending Climate: US State & Local Sales Tax Rates

Tax Foundation:

The Tax Foundation has released Updated Combined State and Local Sales Tax Rates. Here are the ten states with the highest and lowest rates:

Let’s help teachers solve bullying problem at schools

Sue Klang and Fred Evert:

It was three years ago that 15-year-old Eric Hainstock entered Weston High School with a 22-caliber pistol and a 20-gauge shotgun.
Within a few short minutes, Principal John Klang confronted Hainstock, trying to protect his school’s students and staff.
After a brief struggle, Klang was shot three times. He died later that day.
Debate continues on exactly what Hainstock intended to do – get the school’s attention for the help he needed, or execute a fatalistic death wish for himself and his school.
What is clear is Hainstock had been bullied.
He was bullied by his father who, he says, treated him like a slave and refused to let him wash. At school and after school, he claimed he was bullied by as many as 30 of his fellow classmates. He says he snapped.

(more…)

Dumbing down education weakens U.S.

Joseph Borrajo:

As if NAFTA’s dismantling of America’s manufacturing base and corporate destruction of the middle class isn’t enough to challenge the needs of the country’s national security, now we have a systematic assault on the nation’s educational system.
In Michigan, it is the dumbing down of needed math standards to compete globally; at the national level, it is the drying up of funds used to harness the talent of young people who cannot afford an elitist entitlement system that’s cost-prohibitive for many.
The common thread of lost manufacturing jobs, a dying middle class and an impaired educational system that promotes inferior curriculum and economic exclusion all serve to undermine the well-being and national security of the country in ways that hostile external elements could never match. The hypocrisy of weakening America while extolling patriotism is a calculated deviousness that, for the sake of the country and the working class, must be challenged.

Obama Wins a Battle as the New Haven Teachers’ Union “Shows Flexibility”

Neil King:

A showdown between the White House and the powerful teachers’ unions looks, for the moment, a little less likely.
This week in New Haven, Conn., the local teachers union agreed, in a 21-1 vote, to changes widely resisted by unions elsewhere, including tough performance evaluations and fewer job protections for bad teachers.
Education Secretary Arne Duncan, as well as the unions, said the New Haven contract could be repeated in other school districts.
Kim Torello, left, and Karen Lavorgna, teachers in New Haven, Conn., discuss the contract that was ratified by their union this week. Terms included tough performance evaluations and fewer job protections.
“I rarely say that something is a model or a template for something else, but this is both,” said Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, who helped broker the New Haven deal.
“This shows a willingness to go into areas that used to be seen as untouchable,” Mr. Duncan said.
His cause for optimism is this: If teachers’ unions start showing flexibility in other cities, the administration’s high-stakes push to boost graduation rates and improve test scores at public schools could get a lot easier. That might even spare the administration an unwanted fight with a labor force that gave Mr. Obama a big lift in his election.

Maine’s School District Consolidation Law

Rich Hewitt:

For more than two years, school district consolidation has been a contentious issue in Maine.
Opponents argue that it has been an ill-conceived, hastily put together and poorly implemented law that has not achieved its goals. Proponents maintain that it represents much-needed reform and is an effective step toward reducing the cost of education in Maine. Question 3 on the Nov. 3 ballot gives voters a chance to weigh those opposing views and decide whether to repeal the law. The question asks: “Do you want to repeal the 2007 law on school district consolidation and restore the laws previously in effect?”
The law, enacted in 2007, attempted to reduce the number of school districts in Maine from 290 to 80, but as of July 2009, there were still 218 districts remaining in the state.
Voters in more than 100 districts, largely in rural areas, rejected reorganization plans despite the penalty they faced through the loss of state education subsidies.

Truancy costs us all

Kamala Harris:

When Michael was in kindergarten, he missed more than 80 days of school. He was not ill and no one from Michael’s family ever called to say why he was not attending school.
When I was elected district attorney, I learned that 5,500 students in San Francisco were habitually truant and – shockingly – 44 percent of the truant students were in elementary school. That is when I partnered with the San Francisco Unified School District to combat school truancy. At the time, many asked why the city’s chief prosecutor was concerned with the problem of school attendance. The answer was simple, and as our partnership now enters its fourth year, the reason remains the same: a child going without an education is tantamount to a crime.
Despite his young age, Michael’s truancy makes him far more likely to be arrested or fall victim to a crime later in life. In San Francisco, over 94 percent of all homicide victims under the age of 25 are high school dropouts. Statewide, two-thirds of prison inmates are high school dropouts.

Advocating Charter Schools in Madison

Wisconsin State Journal Editorial, via a kind reader:

Charter schools have no bigger fan than President Barack Obama.
The federal government gave Wisconsin $86 million on Thursday to help launch and sustain more charter schools across the state.
State schools chief Tony Evers said $5 million will go to two dozen school districts this year, with the rest of the money distributed over five years.
Madison, to no surprise, wasn’t on Thursday’s winner list. And don’t expect any of the $86 million for planning and implementing new strategies for public education to be heading Madison’s way.
That’s because the Madison School Board continues to resist Obama’s call for more charter schools. The latest evidence is the School Board’s refusal to even mention the words “charter school” in its strategic action plans.
In sharp contrast, Obama can hardly say a word about public education without touting charters as key to sparking innovation and engaging disadvantaged students.
Obama visited a New Orleans charter school Thursday (and raised money that evening in San Francisco at a $34K per couple dinner) and is preparing to shower billions on states to experiment with new educational strategies. But states that limit charter growth will not be eligible for the money.

I am in favor of a diffused governance model here. I think improvement is more likely via smaller organizations (charters, magnets, whatever). The failed Madison Studio School initiative illustrates the challenges that lie ahead.

The Democrat Party and the Schools

Nicholas Kristof:

The Democratic Party has battled for universal health care this year, and over the decades it has admirably led the fight against poverty — except in the one way that would have the greatest impact.
Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times
Nicholas D. Kristof
On the Ground
Nicholas Kristof addresses reader feedback and posts short takes from his travels.
Good schools constitute a far more potent weapon against poverty than welfare, food stamps or housing subsidies. Yet, cowed by teachers’ unions, Democrats have too often resisted reform and stood by as generations of disadvantaged children have been cemented into an underclass by third-rate schools.
President Obama and his education secretary, Arne Duncan, are trying to change that — and one test for the Democrats will be whether they embrace administration reforms that teachers’ unions are already sniping at.
It’s difficult to improve failing schools when you can’t create alternatives such as charter schools and can’t remove inept or abusive teachers. In New York City, for example, unions ordinarily prevent teachers from being dismissed for incompetence — so the schools must pay failed teachers their full salaries to sit year after year doing nothing in centers called “rubber rooms.”
A devastating article in The New Yorker by Steven Brill examined how New York City tried to dismiss a fifth-grade teacher for failing to correct student work, follow the curriculum, manage the class or even fill out report cards. The teacher claimed that she was being punished for union activity, but an independent observer approved by the union confirmed the allegations and declared the teacher incompetent. The school system’s lawyer put it best: “These children were abused in stealth.”

Pittsburgh’s model of school governance reform

Milwaukee Public Policy Forum:

In the past few weeks Milwaukee has had numerous town hall meetings, panel discussions, and presentations regarding the idea of school district governance reform. At issue is whether the mayor of Milwaukee should be in charge of the Milwaukee Public Schools, rather than an independent board of directors.

At each of these meetings, accountability has been thrown about as both an argument for and against a mayoral take-over of the district. Perhaps a mayor elected in a higher turn-out citywide election would provide more accountability; or maybe losing the opportunity to elect a school board representative would disenfranchise certain voters, diluting accountability.

In Pittsburgh, civic leaders, parents, and citizens decided to stop talking about accountability and actually implement it. A local nonprofit group, A+ Schools: Pittsburgh’s Community Alliance for Public Education, started an initiative called “Board Watch” last winter. The idea is quite simple: send volunteers to attend every board and committee meeting and have them report to the public whether the board is being effective in meeting the district’s strategic goals.

Going to school can be a deadly journey

Wendell Hutson:

Community activists said the recent murder of a Fenger High School honor student exposes a problem many teens face every day: safe passage to and from school.
“I wonder how many more teens will be murdered while coming home from school,” said Leonardo D. Gilbert, a Local School Council member in the Roseland community. “All this kid was trying to do was go home and it cost him his life. If we are going to save our children from violence we must make sure children have a safe way home from school.”
According to Chicago police, Derrion Albert, 16, was murdered after school on Sept. 24 while waiting for a bus to go home.
“He was not in a gang but in the wrong place at the wrong time,” said Michael Shields, a retired Chicago police officer who now works as director of security for Chicago Public Schools.

Make Parenting Education Part of Public School Reform

Esther Jantzen:

Mayor Richard Riordan, your disappointment in the progress of educational reform in the Los Angeles Unified School District, after all you’ve done as mayor and secretary of education under Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, was palpable in your Oct. 12 Times Op-Ed article, “Course outline for the LAUSD.” This lack of progress breaks my heart too.
At the risk of seeming presumptuous, may I make a suggestion to you and to educational reformers everywhere — a suggestion that is based on experience, common sense and research?
I was an urban public high school English teacher for many years. I tried hard: I took courses in teaching reading and writing; I prepared for classes; I graded research papers on vacations; I won grants for my schools; I won teacher of the year awards; I got advanced degrees; I supported reform.

(Indiana) Education revisions must be well planned

David Dew:

All the people participating already knew that dropping out is a bad idea. He needed to invite those prison inmates, those who are unemployed, and those in poverty for the input about what would have been most helpful to have met their needs when they were in school. That’s where the answers are.
My own middle school once held annual forums with our students who had gone on to high school, and we purposely wanted to talk, not with just the A-students, but with the C students and the D-minus students. We asked them what we as a middle school could have done better in hopes of finding insights for our continual improvement.
A teacher or counselor can make his/her best “argument” to a young person that his/her life will be more successful if he/she stays in school, but that young person may drop out anyway. We need that person’s input by hindsight as to what we all could have done better in the face of what the rest of us see as common sense but, nevertheless, led to a decision for which that dropout was still on his/her own responsibility.
Bennett further cites that Indiana is “raising the bar for every student” through academic standards. While we must always analyze what we expect our students to learn and continuously try to measure their success, raising standards for the sake of raising standards will not save students who are failing in school. That would be akin to requiring students to pass a test on algebra who haven’t learned to multiply and divide or requiring students with limited English or learning disabilities to test at the same standards at a chonological age while saying we need, as Bennett said, “targeted, individualized improvement plans for these students.”
There seems to be a contradiction here. The state has an ISTEP test that it keeps tweaking and changing, giving little comparison to previous results although those comparisons are made anyway and schools are graded in an apples-and-oranges world. Give the test some time.

Indiana Superintendent’s website

Black Male Dropouts Lead Nation in Incarceration

Reuters:

On any given day, nearly 23 percent of all young Black men ages 16 to 24 who have dropped out of high school are in jail, prison, or a juvenile justice institution in America, according to a disturbing new national report released today on the dire economic and social consequences of not graduating from high school.
Dropouts become incarcerated at a shocking rate: 23 of every 100 young Black male dropouts were in jail on any given day in 2006-07 compared to only 6 to 7 of every 100 Asian, Hispanic or White dropouts. While young Black men are disproportionately affected, the report found that this crisis cuts across racial and ethnic lines. Male dropouts of all races were 47 times more likely to be incarcerated than their peers of a similar age who had graduated from a four-year college or university.
“For too long, and in too many ways, young people across the country have been let down by the education system and by the adults responsible for their care and development. Now is the time to increase the investments we make in young people, enhance the content, opportunities and supports we provide, and empower them to make better choices about both their individual future and the future of our nation. This report is another important step towards those ends,” said Marc Morial, President and CEO of the National Urban League.

Harvard’s Hollow Core

“The philosophy behind the core is that educated people are not those who have read many books and have learned many facts but rather those who could analyze facts if they should ever happen to encounter any, and who could ‘approach’ books if it were ever necessary to do so.”

Caleb Nelson ’88 (Mathematics) writing in The Atlantic Monthly, September 1990:

Even before Harvard’s Core Curriculum made its debut, in 1979, Saturday Review hailed it as “a quiet revolution.” The magazine was wrong on both counts: not only was the core unrevolutionary but it rapidly became one of the loudest curricula in America. Time, Newsweek, and other popular periodicals celebrated the new program, which required undergraduates to take special courses designed to reveal the methods–not the content–of the various academic disciplines. “Not since…1945,” The Washington Post said, “had the academic world dared to devise a new formula for developing ‘the educated man.'” The reform was front-page news for The New York Times, and even network television covered it. Media enthusiasm continues today, with Edward Fiske, the former education editor of The New York Times advising readers of The Fiske Guide to Colleges: “Back in the mid-1970s Harvard helped launch the current curriculum reform movement, and the core curriculum that emerged ranks as perhaps the most exciting collection of academic offerings in all of American higher education.”
The core did indeed start a movement. A 1981 report issued by The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching spoke of “the Harvard lead” and recommended a general-education program that put more emphasis on “the shared relationships common to all people” than on any particular facts. The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill soon adopted the Harvard approach, and other schools have instituted programs that stress skills over facts. The structures of these programs vary, but the Harvard core’s singular influence is suggested by Ernest Boyer’s 1987 book College: The Undergraduate Experience in America. Boyer’s survey of academic deans at colleges and universities nationwide found that the Harvard core was the most frequently mentioned example of a successful program of general education.
For their part, Harvard officials seem delighted with the program. A. Michael Spence, who just finished a six-year term as dean of the faculty of arts and sciences, has labeled it “a smash hit”; President Derek Bok has heralded its “enormous success.” Indeed, Bok, who will step down next year after two decades at the helm, said in 1983, when the faculty approved the continuation of the core, that the development of the program had given him more satisfaction than any other project undertaken during his presidency. In 1985 the members of Harvard’s chief governing board showed that they had no complaints either when the elected the core’s architect, Henry Rosovsky, to their number. (Rosovsky, who preceded Spence as dean of the faculty, has now been appointed acting dean while Harvard searches for Spence’s permanent replacement.) The program recently marked its tenth anniversary, and no fundamental changes are on the horizon.
Forty-five years ago Harvard had a clear idea of its mission. In 1945 it published a 267-page book laying out goals for educators, with the hope of giving American colleges and secondary schools a “unifying purpose and idea.” The thrust of this volume, titled General Education in a Free Society but nicknamed “the Redbook,” was that educational institutions should strive to create responsible democratic citizens, well versed in the heritage of the West and endowed with “the common knowledge and the common values on which a free society depends.” As James Bryant Conant, then the president of Harvard, once summed up his goal, “Our purpose is to cultivate in the largest possible number of our future citizens an appreciation of both the responsibilities and the benefits which come to them because they are Americans and are free.”
To accomplish this goal at Harvard, the Redbook recommended that every undergraduate be required to take two full-year survey courses, tentatively called “Great Texts of Literature” and “Western Thought and Institutions,” and a full-year course on the principles of either the physical or the biological sciences. The Harvard faculty balked at this specific program, but it endorsed the Redbook’s essence. In each of three areas–the humanities, the social sciences, and the natural sciences–it established a short list of approved courses. The general education program was first required in the fall of 1949 and was fully phased in two years later, when all entering students were required to do two semesters of approved coursework in each area.

(more…)

California learns to trim the cost of education

Matthew Garrahan:

W hen Mark Yudof addressed the Uni versity of Califor nia’s board of regents recently, what would have normally been a quiet gathering turned into a circus.
Fourteen people were arrested after protesting against cuts in the funding of the UC network, which includes UCLA, Berkeley and San Diego and business schools such as Haas , the Anderson School of Management and the Rady School of Management.
As California grapples with a budget crisis that has affected all public services, the UC system has been asked to absorb a funding shortfall of more than $800m. Student protests on a scale unseen since the anti-war demonstrations of the 1960s have been held at Berkeley, while other protests have been held at UCLA and UC Irvine.
Mr Yudof, the president of the UC system, told the regents that steep tuition fee rises were un-avoidable. “What we cannot do is surrender to the greatest enemy of the University of California, which is mediocrity. We have to stabilise our situation and then we can build [again].”

Seattle Public Schools Boundary/School Assignment Plan Comments

The Seattle Times:

FAMILIES chafe at the Seattle Public Schools‘ wild variability on student assignments. Proposed new school boundaries and a simplified assignment plan offer promising change. [Complete Assignment/Boundary Plan – 358K PDF]
A complex maze that used to determine what school students attended has been streamlined into an uncomplicated rule: students’ addresses determine their school.
Students entering kindergarten, sixth grade and ninth grade in the 2010-11 year will be assigned to a school near their home. Students in other grades will remain at their current schools, an appropriate grandfathering that minimizes disruptions.
Many families won’t notice a difference. For others, this plan is a huge change. Families living on Queen Anne and in Magnolia have long asked for a neighborhood high school so students weren’t bused across the city. They’re being assigned to one of the best: Ballard High School.
This shift is the correct route forward. After the district ended bussing for integration purposes, it veered into an expensive and convoluted open choice system. Families could choose any school they wanted but the result was a lack of predictability and stability. Most troubling, the system weighed heavily against less savvy families who were unable to navigate the application process.

Seattle Schools Strategic Plan

Beefing up: High school football players are bigger but not necessarily healthier

Eric Cexheimer & John Maher:

Last weekend, two football teams faced off in a fierce divisional rivalry. Both boasted intimidating offenses built around sumo-sized linemen; half of the two teams’ centers, guards and tackles tipped the scales above 300 pounds.
The teams aren’t from the NFL. They aren’t big-time colleges, or even Division II or III squads. They are the Central Texas high schools of McNeil and Cedar Park. The largest of their linemen is approaching 350 pounds.
Once a rarity, teenaged mega-players have become a common sight under the Friday night lights. “If you were to weigh the lines of high school football teams, they’re significantly higher in recent years,” said Brian Carr, a physical therapist and trainer at Georgetown High School. “Compared to just 15 years ago, there’s a huge difference.”
Doctors and trainers are reporting increases in certain injuries — stress-related muscle and ligament tears, knee strains and foot fractures — that can be directly attributed to the strains placed on developing bodies by extra bulk. Weight-related medical problems are also beginning to crop up among the giant teenagers.

Did Rhee Overplay Her Hand or Seek A Showdown?

Robert McCartney:

I want to love Michelle Rhee — really, I do — but she makes it so hard sometimes.
The D.C. schools chancellor has made it especially difficult this month with her layoffs of 229 teachers and 159 other staff workers. She picked a spectacularly bad time, just as the school year was shifting into high gear. She also mishandled the theatrics in such a way that she enraged the unions and D.C. Council even more than she usually does.
As a result, labor and political tensions simmering in the city over Rhee’s reforms since she arrived in 2007 boiled over last week. The spillage might jeopardize her whole project and poses a significant challenge for her patron, Mayor Adrian M. Fenty (D), as he seeks reelection next year.
The uproar is regrettable because the city and the region have a strong interest in seeing Rhee succeed. She is the first leader of the D.C. schools in recent memory who seems sufficiently tough and determined to fix the shockingly poor school performance that we’ve tolerated complacently for decades.

Chicago teens’ world fraught with violence

Azam Ahmed & Kristen Mack:

His left eye still swollen shut, Vashion Bullock doesn’t deny fighting in the melee that claimed a Chicago high school student’s life last month.
He’s watched the grainy cellphone video and seen himself standing shirtless in the middle of the mob. But to him, the footage is a 2 1/2 -minute clip of his world without context, broadcast endlessly on television and the Web.
This mob included students who made the honor roll, held after-school jobs, played sports and planned for college. But they wake up in worlds frayed by poverty and violence.
For years, Vashion and others bused in from Altgeld Gardens have fought with kids who live closer to Fenger High School and who see them as outsiders, according to interviews with dozens of students and parents. The Fenger senior said he often races to the bus stop to avoid confrontation. But that Thursday, he had been suspended for a school fight. And he’d had enough.

Teacher Union Politics in Washington, DC

Washington Post Editorial:

Let’s review the record to examine the plausibility of those charges.
More than 14 months ago , Ms. Rhee offered a contract to Washington’s teachers that was unprecedented in its largess. The proposal would have provided teachers with, at a minimum, a 28 percent pay raise over five years, plus $10,000 in bonuses. They would have had to give up nothing in the way of job security to obtain the raise. All Ms. Rhee asked in return was the freedom to offer, on a voluntary basis, even more money to a subset of teachers, if they would agree to have their compensation linked to performance. Their evaluation would have been based on a number of factors, including, but not limited to, the improvement their students showed from the beginning of the school year to the end. Ms. Rhee — who has been branded anti-teacher — wanted to make the District’s teachers among the highest paid in America, and she had managed to raise private funds to make it possible.
Washington’s teachers might well have welcomed this generous offer — who wouldn’t? — but we don’t know because Mr. Parker and other union leaders never allowed them to vote on a proposed contract. Labor law barred Ms. Rhee from directly explaining to teachers what she had in mind. At one point, it seemed that Mr. Parker and Ms. Rhee were close to an agreement, but then the national leadership stepped in. Since Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, involved herself, another 10 months have passed, and Washington’s teachers remain without a contract. Talks are said to be continuing.

Madison Country Day School Host Japanese Students

Pamela Cotant:

Fabian Fernandez, a junior at Madison Country Day School, said hosting a student from Japan forces you to look at your own culture, and to consider the differences and similarities.
“You kind of get to re-experience your own culture,” said Fernandez, whose family has hosted a number of students from other countries. “Even the small things.”
Recently, eight Japanese 10th-graders and one teacher were here for nine days and stayed with host families from Madison Country Day School, which they also attended.
Every other year, the students from Hakuoh High School visit Madison Country Day, a private school for pre-kindergarten through 12th-grade students, through a sister-school relationship.
During alternate years, Madison Country Day students visit the school in Ashikaga City, Japan, about 90 miles from Tokyo. This year, five juniors and seniors are considering the trip.

McFarland’s Wisconsin Virtual Academy doing ‘remarkably well’ in year one

Devin Rose:

Q How has the school year been going for students at the Wisconsin Virtual Academy, the online school contracted by the McFarland School District?
A Things have gone “remarkably well” so far for the virtual charter school in its first year of operation, said Leslye Erickson, the head of the school.
The McFarland School District contracted with the nonprofit Wisconsin Virtual Academy and K12 Virtual Schools to run and provide the research-based curriculum for the school, which has 488 students enrolled in kindergarten through high school.
Students come from all over the state, Erickson said, so orientations were held before school began to allow students, parents and teachers to meet face-to-face.

Washington, DC Area Educators Study Promising Japanese Teaching Method

Emma Brown:

Third-grade teacher Andy Gomez stood at a whiteboard before 10 of his colleagues on a recent Thursday afternoon at Marie Reed Elementary in Adams Morgan. His students were stumbling over subtraction problems like 700 minus 369, he said — the zeros were tripping them up.
The solution to their difficulties was coming — by way of Japan.
For the next half-hour, the group discussed — down to nitty-gritty details about vocabulary to use or avoid — what the students’ fundamental misunderstandings about numbers might be and how to address them.
This collaborative examination of the mechanics of teaching is part of the school’s embrace of “lesson study,” a model of professional development for teachers that was developed in Japan. It was pioneered in the District by five teachers at Marie Reed, who began meeting weekly two years ago to study math content and pedagogy.

Parents Judging Parents of Home-Schoolers

Lisa Belkin:

Over on Salon.com last week, senior editor Andrew O’Hehir posted the first in what will be a series of essays about home-schooling his 5-year-old twins with his wife, Leslie. It is long, but insightful and informative, filled both with the whys and the hows of this choice.
What struck me most about the piece, though, was not its practical bent, but its philosophical notes, where O’Hehir describes the reactions of strangers when he mentions home schooling to them — the judgment, spoken or not, particularly from other parents. He writes:

After various tense conversations with friends, family members and strangers, Leslie and I have concluded that earnest, heartfelt discussion of exactly how we’re approaching our kids’ education and why we’re doing it is a bad idea. For reasons I can about halfway understand, other parents often seem to feel attacked by our eccentric choices. I guess this is what it’s like to be a vegan, or a Mennonite convert. I can certainly remember having a weirdly defensive response (“You know, I hardly ever eat red meat”), one where I reacted to someone else’s comment about themselves as if it were really all about me.

School Reform

Ed Garvey:

Just about every meaningful reform begins with education. If our schools are not working well, then ultimately nothing works. Wisconsin has enjoyed great schools from kindergarten to the university system to technical colleges.
One reason our kids score at or near the top in national testing is parental involvement. Parents in Wisconsin demand high quality education and the elected school boards respond.
The Wisconsin Constitution guarantees public school education for all children from age 4 to 20. At one time that protection did not apply to children with “learning problems.” They were called “retarded” and were sent to institutions, but in 1966 parents decided that was unacceptable. They turned to Attorney General Bronson La Follette for his opinion and he ruled that “all” meant “all.” Every child in Wisconsin would be educated.

Education Agency Will Offer Grants for Innovative Ideas

Sam Dillon:

The federal Department of Education sketched out a new nationwide competition on Tuesday under which some 2,700 school districts and nonprofit groups are expected to compete for pieces of a $650 million innovation fund.
The department already has the 50 states vying for chunks of a $5.4 billion education improvement fund that it calls Race to the Top; the innovation fund is a separate competition.
Federal officials said the Investing in Innovation Fund would be distributed in three categories. Small development grants of up to $5 million will support new, unproven ideas that seem worth exploring, they said. Validation grants of up to $30 million will support existing programs that have shown evidence that they can work. Scale-up grants of up to $50 million will go to programs that have developed a strong track record for improving student achievement, the officials said.

Community Leaders Excluded from Duncan and Holder Four Seasons Chicago Meeting

Dick Johnson & Steve Bryant:

Community leaders and parents outside Fenger are in disbelief that they are not at the breakfast table with Arne Duncan and Eric Holder.
Attorney General Holder and Secretary of Education Duncan are in town to speak, ostensibly, with the community about youth violence — a blight on Chicago neighborhoods so vividly brought to national attention by the videotaped beating of Derrion Albert.
“They are meeting about us without us,” said Phillip Jackson of the Black Star Project, a Chicago-based educational reform organization.
Duncan and Holder’s meeting at the Four Seasons also includes Mayor Daley, Pastor Michael Pfleger, CEO of Chicago Public Schools Ron Huberman, and Police Superintendent Jody Weis.

Material for the Daily Show.

Youth Violence a National Issue

All Things Considered:

Following the recent incident of youth violence in Chicago, the Obama administration dispatched two Cabinet officials, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and Education Secretary Arne Duncan, to deal with the issue. Duncan says the issue is a national one — not just urban or rural or suburban.

More on Duncan’s Chicago appearance here.

The School Volunteer Jobs That Most Help Your Kids

Sue Shellenbarger:

Rosa Rivera receives so many invitations to volunteer at her children’s school and other activities that the dozens of daily emails and calls about various projects can be “just overwhelming,” says the mother of two.
At her children’s stage, ages 7 and 9, her top priority is to take the projects that will help them most in school and life, says Ms. Rivera, Austin, Texas. But it can be hard to figure out which projects those are. “You’re pulled and stretched in so many directions, now more than ever,” she says.
Cash-strapped schools are leaning hard on parents for help this fall. Some 53% of parents plan to volunteer at their children’s schools, up from 44% last year, says a poll of 1,086 parents by Harris Interactive and GreatSchools, a nonprofit parent-involvement group. The re-opening of schools this fall has triggered a 50% increase in volunteer signups at VolunteerSpot.com, a Web site for organizing volunteers, to 75,000 from 50,000 last summer, says founder Karen Bantuveris,.
Sometimes, of course, it is best to volunteer where a school needs you most. And most school volunteer projects have worthy goals. Fundraisers keep alive arts, sports or music programs. Helping out in the school office fills staffing gaps. Painting classrooms improves kids’ environment. Serving on the school board helps shape schools’ strategy and direction.
But for parents with limited time and energy, which roles deliver the biggest benefit for your kids? And how does the answer to that question change as a student grows up? Here’s what research and experts say:
• Elementary School: Volunteer where your child can see you.

Focus in Chicago: Students at Risk of Violence

Susan Saulny:

The new chief officer of the public schools here, Ron Huberman, a former police officer and transit executive with a passion for data analysis, has a plan to stop the killings of the city’s public school students. And it does not have to do with guns or security guards. It has to do with statistics and probability.
The plan comes too late for Derrion Albert, the 16-year-old who was beaten to death recently with wood planks after getting caught on his way home between two rival South Side gangs, neither of which he was a member, the police said.
The killing, captured on cellphone video and broadcast on YouTube, among other places, has once again caused widespread grief over a seemingly intractable problem here. Derrion, a football player on the honor roll, was the third youth to die violently this academic year — and the 67th since the beginning of the 2007-8 school year. And hundreds of others have survived shootings or severe beatings on their way to and from school.

Portfolio school districts: promising but ‘Works in progress’

via a Deb Britt email:

“Portfolio school districts are promising new developments but they still have big problems to solve,” is how Dr. Paul Hill describes reforms in the four big cities being studied by his team at the Center on Reinventing Public Education (CRPE), University of Washington Bothell.
In New York City, Chicago, Washington, D.C., and New Orleans, school officials are revamping the traditional school district model: from being an operator of a uniform set of schools and related services to being a holder of a diverse portfolio of schools, each meant to meet a particular need, and all subject to evaluation in light of evidence.
“A portfolio district is built for continuous improvement via expansion and imitation of the highest-performing schools, closure and replacement of the lowest-performing, and constant search for new ideas,” says Hill. “So far we’ve found that each city is taking a different approach to developing their portfolio. By the end of our study (in 2011), we think this will tell us a lot more about this approach to public education.”
Portfolio School Districts for Big Cities: An Interim Report, published today by CRPE, introduces the subject of portfolio districts and opens a window on the particular approaches being taken in the four cities.
New York City – gave schools freedom over hiring and use of funds in return for accepting performance-based accountability and by adopting pupil-based funding of schools citywide.

High School Civics: Mourning Constitutional

Matthew Ladner, via a kind reader’s email:

September 17 is Constitution Day, marking the day 222 years ago in Philadelphia when the Constitution of the United States was signed. Legend has it that a woman asked Benjamin Franklin, as he was leaving the constitutional convention, what sort of government had been created. Franklin’s reply: “A republic, if you can keep it.”
A major justification for supporting a system of public schools has been the promotion of a general diffusion of civic knowledge necessary for a well-informed citizenry. America’s founders, hoping to “secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity,” knew that our system of ordered liberty would endure only if its citizens understood the nation’s guiding principles. The endurance of American liberty, the founders believed, depends upon a broad knowledge of the nation’s history and an understanding of its institutions.
Charles N. Quigley, writing for the Progressive Policy Institute, once explained the critical nature of civic knowledge: “From this nation’s earliest days, leaders such as Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and John Adams recognized that even the well-designed institutions are not sufficient to maintain a free society. Ultimately, a vibrant democracy must rely on the knowledge, skill, and virtues of its citizens and their elected officials. Education that imparts that knowledge and skill and fosters those virtues is essential to the preservation and improvement of American constitutional democracy and civic life.
“The goal of education in civics and government is informed, responsible participation in political life by citizens committed to the fundamental values and principles of American constitutional democracy.”1
For its part, the State of Oklahoma also lays out the goals of social studies education. According to the state’s academic standards: “Oklahoma schools teach social studies in Kindergarten through Grade 12. … However it is presented, social studies as a field of study incorporates many disciplines in an integrated fashion, and is designed to promote civic competence. Civic competence is the knowledge, skills, and attitudes required of students to be able to assume ‘the office of citizen,’ as Thomas Jefferson called it.

Education + Politics = $

Cartel, the Movie:

eachers punished for speaking out. Principals fired for trying to do the right thing. Union leaders defending the indefensible. Bureaucrats blocking new charter schools. These are just some of the people we meet in The Cartel. The film also introduces us to teens who can’t read, parents desperate for change, and teachers struggling to launch stable alternative schools for inner city kids who want to learn. We witness the tears of a little girl denied a coveted charter school spot, and we share the triumph of a Camden homeschool’s first graduating class.
Together, these people and their stories offer an unforgettable look at how a widespread national crisis manifests itself in the educational failures and frustrations of individual communities. They also underscore what happens when our schools don’t do their job. “These are real children whose lives are being destroyed,” director Bob Bowdon explains.
The Cartel shows us our educational system like we’ve never seen it before. Behind every dropout factory, we discover, lurks a powerful, entrenched, and self-serving cartel. But The Cartel doesn’t just describe the problem. Balancing local storylines against interviews with education experts such as Clint Bolick (former president of Alliance for School Choice), Gerard Robinson (president of Black Alliance for Educational Options), and Chester Finn (president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute), The Cartel explores what dedicated parents, committed teachers, clear-eyed officials, and tireless reformers are doing to make our schools better for our kids.

Good educators all differ

Alan Borsuk:

A Milwaukee-area middle school. Two boys playing around, nothing terrible, but things get a bit too rough. One of them tears the sleeve of the other one’s shirt. Not such a big deal – except the shirt belonged to the boy’s late father. It carried a lot of emotion for him.
The boy goes to pieces. He ends up in front of the principal.
The principal has an idea: Save the shirt. Convert it to short sleeves.
The principal goes to the school’s family and consumer education teacher (OK, they were called home economics teachers in my day). She’s only in the building part of the day, she doesn’t teach sewing, she doesn’t have the boy in class or even know him. But maybe she’ll do it.
She does it – that evening, on her own time, the way lots of teachers do out-of-the-way things for their kids, or even for kids they don’t directly teach.
The shirt is saved. The emotions are treated with dignity. By the next day, the boy again has this renewed memento of his father.

Rethinking “Small Learning Communities”: A review of the small-schools structure at North Eugene High nears

Anne Williams:

Four years after North Eugene High School set out to reinvent itself, the Eugene School Board wants to take stock. [Eugene School Board Goals, Superintendent’s Proposed Goals.]
Within the next month or two, the district — at the board’s behest — will hire an individual or team of educational researchers to try to gauge how well North Eugene’s “small schools” structure is serving students.
“It’s kind of consistent with board goals; we try to have measurable results,” board Chairman Craig Smith said. “We decided that, since the first class has come through, it’s time to see where we are in terms of progress.”
Showing gains — lower dropout rates, improved student achievement, better attendance and greater college readiness — has been difficult at many schools that have taken North Eugene’s path.
Championed and chiefly bankrolled by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the small schools movement aimed to lift student achievement by creating highly personalized schools where all students were known and held to high standards and teachers worked closely together.
But after investing a goodly share of $2 billion into the creation of hundreds of small schools across the country, the Gates Foundation has shifted direction in its high school reform strategy, focusing less on structure and more on effective teaching and curriculum.
“The structural and design changes in schools we focused on in our earlier work simply did not yield those gains,” Vicki Phillips, the foundation’s education director, told Congress last May.
A growing number of grant recipients have dissolved their small schools and are going back to a traditional model, sometimes with some small-school elements intact. Most cite disappointing results or burdensome operating costs, or both. Those schools include Portland’s Madison High School and Mountlake Terrace High School in the Seattle suburbs, a flagship of the initiative that staff members from North visited during the planning phase.

Clusty Search: North Eugene High School and the Gates Foundation Small Learning Community Grant.
Madison School District’s CIO, Kurt Kiefer said recently that:

“smaller learning communities is what they are striving for in high schools. Kiefer says the smaller learning initiative – there is a correlation in decrease in drop out rate with the program.”
SIS has many, many posts on the controversy over Madison’s implementation of Small Learning Communities.
Examining the results of Madison West High School’s Small Learning Community Implementation, and its implementation of English 10

Ben Chavis: “The Democrats have it wrong, guys,” Chavis said Friday at a forum hosted by the libertarian Cato Institute in Washington. “We have screwed up the public school systems.”

Lynsi Burton:

Although a Democrat, Ben Chavis, the former principal of the American Indian Public Charter School in Oakland, is an unlikely advocate for the education reform plan backed by President Obama.
Chavis bucks the conventions typically associated with his party’s education platform, which is generally union-friendly.
“The Democrats have it wrong, guys,” Chavis said Friday at a forum hosted by the libertarian Cato Institute in Washington. “We have screwed up the public school systems.”
When he took over one of Oakland’s worst-performing charter schools, he emphasized the importance of standardized test scores, shamelessly ousted teachers he considered substandard, and employed military-style discipline on his students.
Now, based on California’s Academic Performance Index, only four middle schools in California perform better than his Oakland charter school, where 81 percent of kids are classified as low-income.
It is this style of teaching accountability that the Obama administration seeks to employ – much to the chagrin of unions – with Race to the Top, a competitive grant program for schools that the White House unveiled in July.

More Transferring from Private to Public Schools in Montgomery County

Michael Birnbaum:

At the end of August, Gabriel Liegey left his crisp school uniform gathering dust in his closet in favor of jeans and T-shirts. Natalie Medrano and her sister traded a long drive to private school in Frederick for a ride on the school bus with other kids on their block. And Lawson Hamilton gave up an eighth-grade class of 26 for a freshman class of almost 500.
All four joined the rising number of Washington area students who have switched out of private schools this year as financial pressures and the availability of good public schools have made the option irresistible to some.
In Montgomery County, the only jurisdiction in the area that tracks movement between private and public schools, the net number of students who jumped from private to public schools rose to 727 in the 2008-09 school year, according to preliminary figures. That is more than double the number in 2006-07 and the largest total since the county began tracking the numbers in 1988.
Other public schools across the region reported a rise in the number of families transferring in.

A Crazy Idea for Middle Schools

Jay Matthews:

When education pundits like me talk about the Ben Chavis. He is very different from us data-sifting eggheads. It is not an exaggeration to call him a wild man. He delights in upbraiding lazy students, outraging inattentive teachers and making wrong-headed visitors to the school wish they had stayed home. He has the independent spirit of someone who had a successful career in construction, teaching and business before the then-woebegone AIPCS board asked him to rescue the school. He didn’t need the job. He did it mostly as a favor to fellow Native Americans–he was born into a Lumbee Indian family of sharecroppers in North Carolina–and as a challenge. He has many of the habits of some of the best educators I know–a wicked sense of humor, a weakness for shocking the conventionally wise and a deep love of children, particularly those who have had difficult lives. I was not initially surprised when I read his new autobiography, “Crazy Like A Fox: One Principal’s Triumph in the Inner City,” written with Carey Blakely, a teacher and administrator who helped him launch the American Indian Public High School. His story was much like those of other ground-breaking educators I have known.”>American Indian Public Charter School in Oakland, Calif., the conversation is always about the middle school’s leader, Ben Chavis. He is very different from us data-sifting eggheads. It is not an exaggeration to call him a wild man. He delights in upbraiding lazy students, outraging inattentive teachers and making wrong-headed visitors to the school wish they had stayed home.
He has the independent spirit of someone who had a successful career in construction, teaching and business before the then-woebegone AIPCS board asked him to rescue the school. He didn’t need the job. He did it mostly as a favor to fellow Native Americans–he was born into a Lumbee Indian family of sharecroppers in North Carolina–and as a challenge. He has many of the habits of some of the best educators I know–a wicked sense of humor, a weakness for shocking the conventionally wise and a deep love of children, particularly those who have had difficult lives.
I was not initially surprised when I read his new autobiography, “Crazy Like A Fox: One Principal’s Triumph in the Inner City,” written with Carey Blakely, a teacher and administrator who helped him launch the American Indian Public High School. His story was much like those of other ground-breaking educators I have known.

Binghamton Lecturer Critical of Athletics Is Fired

Pete Thamel:

The Binghamton University adjunct lecturer who accused the athletic department of giving preferential treatment to men’s basketball players and pressuring her to change her grading policy for players was dismissed Tuesday.
The lecturer, Sally Dear, who taught human development for 11 years, said she felt the decision was linked to her criticism that appeared in a New York Times article in February.

A Push for New York Charter Schools

Gail Robinson:

In the wake of a study finding charter schools help close the student achievement gap, Mayor Michael Bloomberg today announced a series of steps to expand and otherwise bolster charter schools in the city. (We’re not sure why this announcement came from his campaign and not the mayor’s office or the education department but it did.)
Much of the plan suggests proposals that charter proponents have sought for a while: lifting the cap on the number of charter schools, giving the schools chancellor the power to grant charters (an authority that now rests with the State Board of Regents) and streamlining the charter review process.
But the statement also provides additional evidence of the mutual back scratching between the Bloomberg administration and the Harlem Children’s Zone and its founder, Geoffrey Canada.

The Inner-City Prep School Experience

Maggie Jones:

In the Southeast section of Washington, a public boarding school sits on four compact acres, enclosed by an eight-foot-high black metal fence. Behind the fence, the modern buildings of the SEED School are well scrubbed and soaked in prep-school culture. Pennants from Dartmouth, Swarthmore and Spelman decorate the hallways. Words that might appear on the next SAT — “daedal,” “holus-bolus,” “calamari” — are taped to bathroom and dorm walls. And inside the cafeteria hang 11-by-15-inch framed photos of SEED grads in caps and gowns, laughing, clutching diplomas.
Beyond the fence, the scene is a different one. Despite some recent development, Southeast’s Ward 7, where SEED is located, and neighboring Ward 8, remain the most impoverished parts of the city, with more than their share of tired liquor stores and low-slung public housing. In all of Ward 7, the 70,000 residents have just one sit-down restaurant, a Denny’s.

NEA moves to help poor schools with best teachers

Greg Toppo:

The USA’s largest teachers union will encourage local chapters to ignore contract provisions that in the past have kept school districts’ best teachers out of schools that serve mostly poor and minority students.
Testifying Tuesday before the House education committee, National Education Association President Dennis Van Roekel said the union, which represents about 3.2 million teachers and other workers, will ask local affiliates to draw up memoranda of understanding with local school districts that would “waive any contract language that prohibits staffing high-needs schools with great teachers.”
Van Roekel said the move is part of the union’s “Priority Schools” campaign that will also encourage “the most accomplished teachers-members” to start their teaching careers in high-needs schools, remain there or transfer there.
In the past, NEA has come under fire from critics for supporting contracts that allow experienced teachers with more seniority to transfer to schools that serve more middle-class children.

Steve Barr’s Answers for School Reform

Malaika Costello-Dougherty:

Green Dot’s founder, who led the turnaround of the toughest school in Los Angeles, discusses his ideas on how to fix a failing system.
This might be the moment for Green Dot founder Steve Barr.
The Obama administration has set a goal of turning around 5,000 failing schools in the next five years, supported by an expected $3 billion in stimulus funds and $2 billion in the 2009 and 2010 budgets. Known in education circles and beyond as an aggressive agent of change, Barr has been in talks with Secretary of Education Arne Duncan about how to boost failing schools and whether Green Dot’s methods can serve as a blueprint for fixing schools across the country.
It was these same failing schools that inspired Barr to start Green Dot. Having known hard times in his youth, including some time as a foster child, Barr was drawn to improving schools for disenfranchised youth.
After working in politics for many years (and cofounding Rock the Vote), he began researching the push to wire all schools with technology. He saw a map that used green dots to represent schools with the necessary infrastructure to be wired and red dots for schools that lacked that foundation. Barr had the vision that every school should be a green dot, and thus began his crusade.
Green Dot consists of 19 small charter high schools in Los Angeles — several of which were formerly part of Watts’s infamous Locke High School, which Green Dot, in an unprecedented coup, broke down into smaller schools. In addition, Green Dot New York finished its first year last June.

Democrat Senator (Illinois) Dick Durbin and Washington, DC School Vouchers

Wall Street Journal:

Low-income families in the District of Columbia got some encouraging words yesterday from an unlikely source. Illinois Senator Richard Durbin signaled that he may be open to reauthorizing the Opportunity Scholarship Program, a school voucher program that allows 1,700 disadvantaged kids to opt out of lousy D.C. public schools and attend a private school.
“I have to work with my colleagues if this is going to be reauthorized, which it might be,” said Mr. Durbin at an appropriations hearing Tuesday morning. He also said that he had visited one of the participating private schools and understood that “many students are getting a good education from the program.”
Earlier this year, Mr. Durbin inserted language into a spending bill that phases out the program after 2010 unless Congress renews it and the D.C. Council approves. A Department of Education evaluation has since revealed that the mostly minority students are making measurable academic gains and narrowing the black-white learning gap. D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee and a majority of the D.C. Council have expressed support for continuing the program.

In knots over school headscarves

The Economist:

FOR all its grand central squares and lively cultural scene, the Belgian port of Antwerp is not always a happy town. Flemish old-timers share its gritty streets with Arabs, Africans, Asians and, in the diamond district, Hasidic Jews. Race relations are not easy: in the latest local elections, a third of the vote went to Vlaams Belang, an anti-immigrant, far-right Flemish nationalist party. The handsome stone bulk of the Royal Atheneum, a once-elite state school with a 200-year history, has produced legendary free-thinkers and radicals in its day. Now, however, it is enjoying unhappy fame: as the centre of an experiment in multiculturalism wrecked by intolerance. The story defies neat conclusions.
In September 2001 Karin Heremans became headmistress of the Atheneum, which has students of 45 nationalities. The September 11th attacks on America came ten days after she took charge, and her schoolyard became the scene of “very intense” arguments. Ms Heremans responded by working hard to turn her school into a place of “active pluralism”. A project about Darwin was led by science teachers but backed by a dialogue among the school’s religious instructors. A local composer wrote a work with Christian, Jewish and Muslim passages for pupils to sing. There were debates on sexuality and elections. A fashion show saw girls invited to wear Muslim headscarves, or not: one teenager wore half a scarf to symbolise indecision.
In France Muslim headscarves, along with all ostentatious religious symbols, have been banned at state schools since 2004. It helps that France has a record of separating religion from the state going back more than a century (even a Christmas nativity play would be unthinkable at a French state school).

Severson / McKenna on the Madison School District, Madison Teacher Union Agreement & Budget

24MB mp3. Notes and links on the recent, tentative agreement between the Madison School District and Madison Teachers, Inc.

Massachusetts Charter Decisions Made to Rescue Governor from “Political Cul de Sac”

Mike Antonucci:

t’s a complex story out of Massachusetts with a simple payoff: The state secretary of education wants charter school authorizations to be based on political considerations, and not on their educational merits.
It begins with reporter Patrick Anderson of the Gloucester Daily Times using a public records request to find a February 5 e-mail from Secretary of Education Paul Reville, Gov. Deval Patrick’s school adviser, to Education Commissioner Mitchell Chester. Gov. Patrick, like many other governors, found religion in charter schools soon after the Obama administration made them a centerpiece of Race to the Top funding. But which charter school applications would be approved, and which rejected, seems to be less of an academic concern and more of a matter of political pressure. Here’s the full text of the e-mail:

Mitchell,
Hope all’s well and warm in AZ. I appreciated our talk today and your openness and flexibility. This situation presents one of those painful dilemmas. In addition to being a no-win situation, it forces us into a political cul de sac where we could be permanently trapped. Our reality is that we have to show some sympathy in this group of charters or we’ll get permanently labeled as hostile and they will cripple us with a number of key moderate allies like the Globe and the Boston Foundation. Frankly, I’d rather fight for the kids in the Waltham situation, but it sounds like you can’t find a solid basis for standing behind that one. I’m not inclined to push Worcester, so that leaves Gloucester. My inclination is to think that you, I and the Governor all need to send at least one positive signal in this batch, and I gather that you think the best candidate is Gloucester. Can you see your way clear to supporting it? Would you want to do the financial trigger even in light of likely stimulus aid?

Schools Push Hits the Road

Neil King:

Education Secretary Arne Duncan invited an odd pair of allies to classrooms in this city to help tout his multibillion-dollar bid to shake up the country’s education system: the liberal Rev. Al Sharpton and the conservative former House Speaker Newt Gingrich.
“These two guys don’t agree on 96% of everything else, but they do agree on the need for dramatic educational reform,” Mr. Duncan said.
As the Obama administration forges ahead with the most ambitious federal intervention in education in decades, Mr. Duncan, the former Chicago schools superintendent, needs whatever political support he can get.
The administration plans in just months to distribute $4.3 billion under its new Race to the Top program to help states set new testing standards, boost teacher quality and help rescue or close thousands of the country’s worst-performing schools.
The plan has come under fire from powerful teachers unions, which were big backers of President Barack Obama during last year’s campaign but are resistant to altering rules for hiring and firing teachers. Some conservatives, meanwhile, are wary of expanding Washington’s grip on local school systems.

Getting dads more involved in education

Concord Monitor:

Why are dads taking on more household chores and child-rearing duties than ever before? The first and best answer is necessity. More moms are working outside the home than in generations past, in turn nudging men into roles their fathers and grandfathers had little need to contemplate.
But this new household order was not constructed on the stench of dirty diapers alone. Changes in attitudes and priorities have strongly contributed to the revolution.
Similar changes will be needed to bring about the kind of change championed by Education Secretary Arne Duncan at a “Conversation on Fatherhood” forum in Manchester last week. Duncan and others involved with the initiative kicked off by President Obama in June are doing a good job of stressing the need for fathers to be involved in their kids’ education. Now educators and those who benefit from a well-educated populace (in short, everyone) need to help turn schools into an environment where fathers feel welcome and competent.

Wisconsin Open Enrollment Study

Amy Hetzner:

Spending more, adding extracurricular activities and increasing the percentage of students deemed advanced on state tests could help Wisconsin school districts that want to attract more students through the state’s open enrollment program.
Those are some of the main conclusions of a new study examining student transfers between 2003 and 2007 under the state’s public school choice program. [Open Enrollment SIS links.]
“There’s a lot of surveys saying parents want this or they want that, but when they actually have to take their kid and drive them to school, that reveals what they really want in a school district,” said David Welsch, an assistant professor of economics at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater and lead author of the study, which is slated for publication in the Economics of Education Review.
Under the state’s open enrollment program, which has been in effect for more than a decade and now serves more than 28,000 students, students can attend any public school district in Wisconsin so long as there is room and they provide their own transportation. State aid – nearly $6,500 this school year – accompanies each open enrollment transfer.
One of the most striking findings in the recent study was that students were more likely to transfer from districts with higher property values and lower tax rates to districts that spend more per pupil. For every $100 difference in spending per student, a higher-spending district could expect about 1.7% more incoming transfers.

Wisconsin Open Enrollment: Part Time / Full Time.

Charter Success Poor children learn. Teachers unions are not pleased.

Washington Post Editorial:

OPPONENTS OF charter schools are going to have to come up with a new excuse: They can’t claim any longer that these non-traditional public schools don’t succeed. A rigorous new study of charter schools in New York City demolishes the argument that charter schools outperform traditional public schools only because they get the “best students.” This evidence should spur states to change policies that inhibit charter-school growth. It also should cause traditional schools to emulate practices that produce these remarkable results.
The study, led by Stanford University economics professor Caroline M. Hoxby, compared the progress of students who won a lottery to enroll in a charter school against those who lost and ended up in traditional schools. The study found that charter school students scored higher on state math and reading tests. The longer they stayed in charters, the likelier they were to earn New York state’s Regents diploma for high-achieving students.
Most stunning was the impact that the charters had on shrinking the achievement gap between minority and white students. “On average,” the study found, “a student who attended a charter school for all of grades kindergarten through eight would close about 86 percent of the ‘Scarsdale-Harlem achievement gap’ in math and 66 percent of the achievement gap in English.” Researchers were careful not to draw conclusions, but they highlighted a correlation to practices such as a longer school day, performance pay for teachers, more time spent on English and effective discipline policies.

Dan Nerad gets creative on Madison schools budget

Lynn Welch:

It’s easy to feel a bit sorry for Madison school officials as they grapple with ways to close a $12 million gap in state funding.
“It sounds like this came out of left field, so I don’t think anyone can be faulted for not imagining that something like this could happen,” says Chan Stroman, a Madison parent with one child attending elementary school and two at a virtual school.
But feelings may change in December, school watchers say, when tax bills land in mailboxes and everyone starts to feel the pain.
The district proposes hiking property taxes — $82.50 for owners of $250,000 homes. This and other solutions stress a school-community partnership, a balance between educational responsibility and fiscal fitness that has become the hallmark of superintendent Dan Nerad’s administration.
Indeed, it’s hard to talk about the current financial situation facing Madison’s schools without hearing an opinion on how Nerad, who began his tenure in July 2008, is managing the situation.

Madison spends about 10% more per student than Dan Nerad’s former District – Green Bay. Madison’s student / staff ratio is about 7, while Green Bay’s is 8. It will be interesting to see what, if any substantive program reviews occur locally, something that the New Superintendent and Board have promised to do. Details here.

October 16 UPPER MIDWEST GREEN SCHOOLS CONFERENCE

site: NORTHLAND COLLEGE , Ashland, WI
2009 Dates: October 16 (Friday Afternoon Pre-Conference) and October 17 (Saturday Conference)
CONFERENCE PROGRAM & REGISTRATION: Go to Green Charter School Conference Program & Registration Links at Northland College.
CONFERENCE KEYNOTERS:
Connections Human & Natural: What Does It Mean To Be An Educated Person? by William Cronon, Professor of History, Geography, & Environmental Studies, U.W. – Madison
Revitalizing Public Education: Let Teachers Lead the Learning by Joe Graba, Founding Partner, Education / Evolving, forty year professional career in public education most recently as Dean of Hamline University’s Graduate School of Education
SMART By NATURE: Schooling for Sustainability is a new book from the Center for Ecoliteracy . It describes the significance of the emerging green schools sector across the country.
“Smart by Nature is must reading for teachers, school administrators, parents, and the concerned public,” writes leading environmental educator David W. Orr. “It is an encyclopedia of good ideas, principles, and case studies of some of the most exciting developments in education.”
The Green Charter Schools Network and River Crossing Environmental Charter School are featured in Smart By Nature. “We’re all concerned about the environment and sustainability,” says Jim McGrath, GCSNet President. “That’s why we’re doing it — because, really, what could be more important than preparing young people for a sustainable future.”
The book documents with firsthand accounts the success stories of green PK-12 schools in preparing students for future environmental challenges. Smart By Nature is 184 pages with 70 photos, charts and illustrations for $24.95 paper from UCPress.

Oakland campus caters to refugees, immigrants The international high school provides an alternative to newcomers, some of whom have never been in a classroom

Anna Gorman:

Samuel Kanwea showed up for what should have been his freshman year in high school illiterate, malnourished and exhausted from years of living in a refugee camp in Ivory Coast. His family had never been able to afford the luxury of education, so he spent his early teenage years collecting firewood and selling fish.
When the Liberian refugee started school in Oakland at the age of 17, it was the first time he had set foot in a classroom.
“Everyone was speaking English and it confused me,” said Kanwea, a lanky student with a wide smile. “And I felt scared because I think that I was the only one who didn’t know how to read.”
New immigrants and refugees have long posed challenges for educators in the United States, but Kanwea and others like him present unique problems because they are often strangers to traditional schools. Academic issues are only one facet of their adjustment. Not only must educators teach them English and move them toward graduation, but they also must counsel many students grappling with the trauma of wars, persecution or poverty.
While most school districts in California place newcomers directly into traditional campuses or short-term English-language programs, Oakland Unified School District offers them an alternative campus — and the option to stay there until graduation. The Oakland International High School opened in 2007 to educate the city’s recent refugees and immigrants, and now enrolls about 220 students from around the world, including from Yemen, Mongolia, Russia, Ghana and Honduras.

New York City Charter School Study

Jonathan Gyurko:

Stanford University economist Caroline Hoxby released yesterday an update to her 2007 study of charter schools in New York City.1 In the study, she compares the state examination results of students enrolled in the City’s charter schools (i.e. those students “lotteried-in”) to the results for those students who applied to a charter but were not selected for admission (i.e. the “lotteried-out”). In many respects, this is a good approach as it aims to account for the possibility that charters enroll more motivated families and that it is this motivation, rather than any particular charter school effect, that is the cause of stronger student achievement.
Hoxby’s findings are encouraging: by the third grade, the average charter school student was 5.8 points ahead of the lotteried-out counterpart in math and was 5.3 points ahead in English Language Arts.2 As Hoxby follows students’ achievement from 2001 to 2008, she also finds that the average charter school student gained 3.6 more points each year in math and 2.4 more points each year in ELA. For an average charter student continuously enrolled in grades four through eight, the effect is larger with annual gains of 5.0 points in math and 3.6 in ELA above the performance of the lotteried-out student. (Last year, nine charters enrolled students across all of these grades.)
To put this in some context, Hoxby explains that the difference between a student not meeting standard and meeting standard is about 31 points in math and 44 points in ELA. She also points out that, on average, students in neighboring and affluent Scarsdale typically out-perform students in New York City by 35 to 40 points. In this context, Hoxby claims that the compounded gains for an average student continuously enrolled in third to eighth grade in a charter nearly closes the “Harlem-to-Scarsdale” achievement gap and implies — going outside of her dataset — that the trend will continue.

How To Remake Education

New York Times Magazine:

Beyond Testing
The single biggest problem in American education is that no one agrees on why we educate. Faced with this lack of consensus, policy makers define good education as higher test scores. But higher test scores are not a definition of good education. Students can get higher scores in reading and mathematics yet remain completely ignorant of science, the arts, civics, history, literature and foreign languages.
Why do we educate? We educate because we want citizens who are capable of taking responsibility for their lives and for our democracy. We want citizens who understand how their government works, who are knowledgeable about the history of their nation and other nations. We need citizens who are thoroughly educated in science. We need people who can communicate in other languages. We must ensure that every young person has the chance to engage in the arts.
But because of our narrow-minded utilitarianism, we have forgotten what good education is.
DIANE RAVITCH
Ravitch is a historian. Her book ”The Death and Life of the Great American School System” will be published in February.
Do Away With B.A.
Discredit the bachelor’s degree as a job credential. It does not signify the acquisition of a liberal education. It does not even tell an employer that the graduate can put together a logical and syntactically correct argument. It serves as rough and unreliable evidence of a degree of intelligence and perseverance — that’s it. Yet across much of the job market, young people can’t get their foot in the door without that magic piece of paper.
As President Obama promotes community colleges, he could transform the national conversation about higher education if he acknowledges the B.A. has become meaningless. Then perhaps three reforms can begin: community colleges and their online counterparts will become places to teach and learn without any reference to the bachelor’s degree; the status associated with the bachelor’s degree will be lessened; and colleges will be forced to demonstrate just what their expensive four-year undergraduate programs do better, not in theory but in practice.
CHARLES MURRAY
Murray is the W. H. Brady scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and the author of ”Real Education: Four Simple Truths for Bringing America’s Schools Back to Reality.”

The charter school problem: Results are much less positive than a new study suggests

Diane Ravitch:

Charter schools are not a panacea for our education problems. The recent study by Caroline Hoxby of Stanford University concludes that disadvantaged students who attended charter schools in New York City for nine years, from kindergarten through eighth grade, can close most of what she calls the “Scarsdale-Harlem achievement gap.” Hoxby does not say how many students completed nine years in a charter school – a key detail, as the city had only about a dozen small charters in 2000.
The results are impressive, but they are not typical of charter schools across the nation.
Nationally there are about 4,600 charter schools enrolling 1.4 million students. They run the gamut from excellent to abysmal. Even their most ardent supporters recognize that they vary widely in quality. Chester Finn, whose Thomas B. Fordham Institute sponsors charter schools in Ohio, wrote, “Some of the best schools I’ve ever been in are charter schools, some of which are blowing the lid off test scores in such vexed communities as Boston, New York and Chicago. And some of the worst – and flakiest – schools I’ve ever been in are charter schools.”

Much more on Diane Ravitch here.

Public Sector Reform: Detroit Mayor’s Tough Love Poses Risks in Election

Monica Davey:

Gone are the cheery promises of earlier city leaders about how Detroit is on the way back. How some new project downtown is surely just the first sign of a renaissance afoot. How things are not so bad.
Instead, Dave Bing, Detroit’s mayor of five months, delivers grim news by the day.
Detroit’s bus service will be cut, he said, and 230 city workers will be laid off next week. Those layoffs are among more than 400 since he took office, and more are possible.
Within a week, he is expected to announce how he will — through elimination, consolidation, outsourcing — shrink a city bureaucracy built for an earlier, booming Motor City.
“We’ve got to focus on being the best 900,000 populated city that we can be and stop thinking about ‘We can turn the clock back to the 1950s and ’60s,’ ” he said, referring to a time when the city, still the 11th most populous in the nation, was nearly twice as big. “That era is gone.”