I had a good chat with U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan this morning at his office. He had other important duties, but I would not let him go until he addressed each and every one of the questions sent in by readers last night and this morning. (Sorry, I missed questions that came in after 8:30 a.m. I had to get going. You know what D.C. traffic is like in the rain.) Here is what he said. I think most of his answers can be summed up as “we’re handing out $4.35 billion in stimulus funds for innovation, and if we do it properly we will help solve a lot of problems.”
From mhallet1: Ask him how he is coming on national Algebra I standards.
Duncan said that was the job of the group of 48 states and the Districts working to produce common standards. He said he is following their progress with great interest, but at the moment it is a state, not a federal, project.
From nicheVC: Disclosure: I spent the first 15 years of my career as an education practitioner, the last 10 investing in and discerning how the private sector might bring innovation and efficacy to the same.
Category Archives: Curriculum
They Don’t Read!
Over the years I’ve often taught Edward Bellamy’s classic 19th century utopian novel Looking Backward. It’s a blistering critique of Gilded Age America and a creative imagining of a future in which work, social class, gender relations, and the political economy have been radically reconfigured. The novel is provocative and rich in ideas, and its premises spark great debate. What it’s not is a page-turner. Most of the book is an extended lecture interspersed with occasional questions and a contrived (and mawkish) romance. Students sometimes complain that the book is “boring.” I’ll take that — they have to have read it to render such a judgment.
Any book we assign is useful only insofar as students actually crack the cover and consume its contents. One of the biggest complaints one hears in the hallways and faculty lounges of American colleges concerns literary dieting. The professorial mantra of the 21st century is: “They just don’t read.” All manner of villains emerge to explain students’ repulsion toward reading: Internet surfing, video games, cell phone obsession, campus partying, over-caffeination, lack of intellectual curiosity…. When all else fails, professors whet their knives to slaughter tried-and-true scapegoats: television and inadequate high school preparation. Here’s a tip about why they don’t read: they never did! In previous articles I’ve noted that instructors often mistakenly assume that all students share their zest for learning. Alas, often we are but credit-accumulation obstacles that students must dodge.
There’s been no Golden Age of student reading in my lifetime — not when I was a student, a high school teacher, a community college instructor, a lecturer at an elite institution, or a prof at a state university. Move on. Think like Edward Bellamy; he was a utopian, but he was no fool. His ideal world did not rely upon people’s good natures; it was structured to remove choice from the equation. Everyone had to work — not a bad way to approach reading in your classrooms. If you want students to read, make it hard (or impossible) to avoid.
How well do kids do research today? Should they ever look at Wikipedia?
Parents: How extensively do your children do research for school papers? Does anyone still own encyclopedias?
Teachers: What sources and how many of them do you require when you assign a research paper? Is Wikipedia acceptable as a source?
Posted by: jane100000
Adam, some would say (and I would agree) that neither conducting an on-line search nor consulting an encyclopedia counts as doing a research paper. Google and wikipedia can give a student a great start in gaining some grasp of the issues s/he is planning to address in a paper, but only reading entire chapters (or entire books) and being able to consult journal articles can get you even close to confidence that you’re not missing the boat.
Are Too Many Students Going to College?
With student debt rising and more of those enrolled failing to graduate in four years, there is a growing sentiment that college may not be the best option for all students. At the same time, President Obama has called on every American to receive at least one year of higher education or vocational training. Behind the rhetoric lies disagreement over a series of issues: which students are most likely to succeed in college; what kind of college they should attend; whether the individual or society benefits more from postsecondary education; and whether college is worth the high cost and likely long-term debt. The Chronicle Review asked higher-education experts to weigh in.
Who should and shouldn’t go to college?
Alison Wolf: Anyone who meets the entry criteria and is willing to pay the fees should be able to go. In one sense, that just passes the buck–politicians then have to decide how much subsidy they are willing to provide. But it shouldn’t be up to them to decide how many people go, what they study, and why.
Charles Murray: It has been empirically demonstrated that doing well (B average or better) in a traditional college major in the arts and sciences requires levels of linguistic and logical/mathematical ability that only 10 to 15 percent of the nation’s youth possess. That doesn’t mean that only 10 to 15 percent should get more than a high-school education. It does mean that the four-year residential program leading to a B.A. is the wrong model for a large majority of young people.
Virtual charter school enrollment 1,615 students under cap, Wisconsin says
The number of students who used open enrollment to attend the state’s virtual charter schools this fall fell well short of the cap set last year by the state Legislature, according to the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction.
In the end, only 3,635 students enrolled in virtual charter schools for the 2009-’10 by using the state’s public school choice system, the DPI says. That’s 3,000 fewer than initially applied and 1,615 under the cap enacted as part of a legislation in response to a court ruling that threatened the schools’ existence.
Wisconsin Education reform package produces odd alliances
To even be eligible for the funds, however, Obama and U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan had said that Wisconsin would have to repeal its “firewall” law that banned the use of student scores in teacher evaluations.
In his remarks, Obama acknowledged that eliminating the law was controversial in some places but said it was a necessary first step toward bringing a new accountability to classrooms, especially with struggling students.
Normally, that would be a message the Wisconsin Association of School Boards would be eager to hear. But instead, the so-called firewall reform bill passed by the Legislature is a failure in the group’s eyes because it doesn’t allow school districts to use student test scores to discipline or dismiss a teacher whose performance doesn’t measure up.
“While the wording of the legislation might meet the letter of the law, we don’t think it really addresses its spirit,” says Dan Rossmiller, a spokesman for the school boards association.
And because the new law requires collective bargaining over any teacher evaluation plan that includes student test scores, Rossmiller says the school boards association believes the requirement would make the process too unwieldy. “We think it will make it harder to use test scores to evaluate teacher effectiveness, not easier,” he adds. “For that reason, I don’t think we’ll be recommending that school districts try to develop evaluation plans for teachers that include using test scores.”
But Mary Bell, president of WEAC, says the new firewall reform law’s most important purpose is to improve teacher effectiveness and that a focus on using data in a punitive way misses the point.
Classic legislative sausage making.
Teaching at universities: A sense of entitlement
A COMIC novel, “Lucky Jim”, published by Kingsley Amis in 1954, portrayed life as a university lecturer as a grubby, tiresome slog, for all that it was shot through with humour. A somewhat drier study of university life has now found that academics no longer devote as much time to teaching as they did because of the bureaucratic burdens they are now forced to carry.
The study, by Malcolm Tight of Lancaster University, examined surveys of academic workloads since 1945. He found that university staff have worked long hours, typically 50 hours a week, since the late 1960s. Academics fiercely protect the time they spend on research. They also do more administrative work than in the past. As a result, he concludes, “the balance of the average academic’s workload has changed in an undesirable way… [making] it more difficult to pay as much attention to teaching as most academics would like to do.”
The finding suggests that new ideas for promoting better university teaching may be addressing only half the problem. On November 3rd Peter Mandelson, the business secretary, whose department’s wide remit includes universities, came up with a series of proposals for modernising them. He wants English universities to compete for students by publishing information on a whole host of issues, including how much direct contact they can expect to have with academic staff.
Harlem Children’s Zone Could Close Education Gap
We’ve blogged several times about Roland Fryer‘s research on education and the black-white achievement gap. Now Fryer thinks he has identified one system that successfully closes the gap. His new working paper, with co-author Will Dobbie, analyzes both the high-quality charter schools and the comprehensive community programs of the Harlem Children’s Zone (which was chronicled in Paul Tough‘s excellent book Whatever It Takes), with hopeful results: “Harlem Children’s Zone is enormously effective at increasing the achievement of the poorest minority children. Taken at face value, the effects in middle school are enough to reverse the black-white achievement gap in mathematics and reduce it in English Language Arts. The effects in elementary school close the racial achievement gap in both subjects.” Fryer and Dobbie attribute the program’s success to the high-quality schools or the combination of high-quality schools and community programs but find that community investments alone cannot close the gap. “The HCZ model demonstrates”, the authors conclude, “that the right cocktail of investments can be successful.”
Blast ‘eyeQ’ with Science
Every week or two I get an email from a teacher, parent, or school board member seeking my opinion about a curriculum or product. I’m not a product reviewer, so until now I’ve declined. But some of the products seem so ill-conceived that I thought it was worth writing about them. So I’m starting an occasional series on this blog called “Hall of Shame” in which I’ll feature educational products that are unsupported or contradicted by scientific evidence, and yet are actually in use in schools.
eyeQ is a computer program currently being tested in Salt Lake City Schools which the makers describe as “an effective tool for Brain Enhancement, Reading Improvement, and Vision Therapy or Eye Training.” Near-sighted users are promised that they likely will see an improvement in their vision. Improvements in reading speed of 100% in less than one month are described as typical.
You can try the first lesson free at the website. You are encouraged to read at different paces (some that are clearly meant to be faster than you could possibly read), to follow a moving object as it appears and disappears at different spots on the screen, and to visualize an object expanding, guided by an oval that increases in size.
Duncan’s raison d’etre for reform
Humans are fallible and have a tendency to repeat past failures. Education is no exception. The pendulum of reform has had its swing back and forth over the decades with minimal progress. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan is taking the bull by the horns, purporting that the very teachers, who have entrusted him as their chief, are not to be trusted to do the proper job without close supervision, re-training, and additional monetary rewards. He calls for scrutiny, an uphauling of current educational institutions by employing a trace back system that will mark the culprit, the raison d’etre for the failure of our children.
Duncan’s tough, paternal scolding sends a clear message: teachers beware.
Revolutionary or some of the same? The 4.35 billion Race to the Top reform resonates a familiar cadence, the mantra of the Bush administration and No Child Left Behind (NCLB), the gotcha mentality that fails to consider a teacher’s moral intentions, or the common good. Certainly, within education, there exists a few bad apples, as in any profession. Yet, the majority of teachers choose the field of teaching for the intrinsic rewards rather than the monetary rewards.
Our failing schools reflect , more likely, a society gone amuck, an evolution of insidious issues that have seeped into the classroom, rather than inept teachers.Yet, Duncan argues that it is the teachers that are ill prepared and failing our students.
Critics who agree, suspected soft bigotry, low expectations, or inept teachers, are coming out in droves and applauding Duncan’s reform as brilliant. Ruben Navarrette, in his article entitled “An Apple for the Secretary” (San Diego Union-Tribune, 10/28/09), argues that the “trace back” method is “groundbreaking stuff” and will finally flesh out the culprits. He points to Louisiana, currently using the trace back theory: students in grades 4-9 with low scores are traced back to teachers and the teachers are then traced back to the institutions that trained them. The state then provides the institution with information and “urges schools to improve.”
True school performance levels at last
BY promising basic information on the performance of our schools, Education Minister, Julia Gillard has landed a blow for common sense and for parents.
For too long, the argument about whether national testing on literacy and numeracy should even be done, let alone published, has been deadlocked.
Education experts, state education departments, teachers and their professional bodies, have long resisted the move arguing that such comparisons were worse than meaningless, they would be misleading.
The argument went that there were many more elements to the education of a young person than simply teaching he or she to read, write, and add up – the so called three “Rs”. But while this argument may be true, it has never been a convincing argument against gathering good information on those things that can be measured well, and then providing it freely.
Acknowledging the “whole person” objective of school education, Ms Gillard says a fundamental prerequisite to becoming a productive community member is basic literacy and numeracy.
Infographic of the Day: Does Adding Teachers Improve Education?
Politicians seem to have temporary set aside the debate about improving our schools, but you can bet that when the issue rises again, one solution will be raised, over and over: Improving student/teacher ratios–that is, hiring more teachers. But is it really a silver bullet for increasing results? What sort of results can we expect?
The graph above offers a few clues–but unraveling them takes a bit of explanation. The crucial point being: Adding teachers might improve student performance relative to past results, but it’s a weak lever for effecting aggregate improvements.
So, let’s dig into the graph. Each of the lines–colored in blue or green–represents data from a single state. To the left is that state’s student/teacher ratio; to the right is that state’s average SAT score.
The graph looks sort of confusing at first, but it actually does a pretty good job at showing that student/teacher ratios and SAT scores aren’t closely related. If they were highly correlated, you’d expect to see lines with slopes all at a 45-degree angle (whether sloping up or down). But as you can see, they’re actually a tangle. The states with the highest SAT achievement have relatively low student/teacher ratios–but those ratios alone don’t account for their performance, since plenty of other states have similar ratios but don’t score nearly as well.
Will a longer school day help close the achievement gap?
A longer school day can help improve student test scores, closing the achievement gap. But critics question the cost of those additional hours.
Going to school from 8 a.m. until 5 p.m. may sound like a student’s nightmare, but Sydney Shaw, a seventh-grader at the Alain Locke Charter Academy on Chicago’s West Side, has come to like it – as well as the extra 20 or so days that she’s in class a year.
“I’m sure every kid at this school says bad things about the schedule sometimes,” says Sydney, who was at school on Columbus Day, when most Chicago schools had a holiday. “But deep down, we all know it’s for our benefit.”
Finding ways to give kids more classroom time, through longer hours, a longer school year, or both, is getting more attention. President Obama and Education Secretary Arne Duncan support a lengthier timetable. Many education reformers agree that more time at school is a key step.
Charter schools like Alain Locke and KIPP schools (a network of some 80 schools that are often lauded for their success with at-risk students) have made big gains in closing gaps in student achievement, partly through expanded schedules. Other schools have been making strides, too – notably in Massachusetts and in the New Orleans system.
Madison School Board Meeting 11/9/2009 Audio
65mb mp3 audio file recorded during Monday’s meeting. Topics include: Strategic Plan benchmarks and the recent passage of Wisconsin education “reform” legislation.
Education & Copyright
A Look at the University of Wisconsin’s Value Added Research Center:
Rob Meyer can’t help but get excited when he hears President Barack Obama talking about the need for states to start measuring whether their teachers, schools and districts are doing enough to help students succeed.
“What he’s talking about is what we are doing,” says Meyer, director of the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Value-Added Research Center.
If states hope to secure a piece of Obama’s $4.35 billion “Race to the Top” stimulus money, they’ll have to commit to using research data to evaluate student progress and the effectiveness of teachers, schools and districts.
Crunching numbers and producing statistical models that measure these things is what Meyer and his staff of 50 educators, researchers and various stakeholders do at the Value-Added Research Center, which was founded in 2004. These so-called “value-added” models of evaluation are designed to measure the contributions teachers and schools make to student academic growth. This method not only looks at standardized test results, but also uses statistical models to take into account a range of factors that might affect scores – including a student’s race, English language ability, family income and parental education level.
“What the value-added model is designed to do is measure the effect and contribution of the educational unit on a student, whether it’s a classroom, a team of teachers, a school or a program,” says Meyer. Most other evaluation systems currently in use simply hold schools accountable for how many students at a single point in time are rated proficient on state tests.
Much more on “value added assessment” here, along with the oft-criticized WKCE test, the soft foundation of much of this local work.
An Alabama High School Makes Literacy a Schoolwide Job
An Alabama school that is seen as a national model shows how to teach reading and writing in every subject.
[and the wordless picture books have been a big hit, too!!…Will Fitzhugh]
“The staff cobbled together an approach that incorporates methods and materials used with younger children, such as art projects and wordless picture books, into high-school-level instruction. The idea is to use engaging activities and easy-to-access materials as door-openers to more complex subject matter.
The result is a high school that ‘looks more like an elementary school,’ Mr. Ledbetter said, because teachers find that letting students sketch, cut out, or fold their ideas seems to work well.”
Catherine Gewertz:
The sheep’s-brain dissections are going rather well. Scalpels in hand, high school students are slicing away at the preserved organs and buzzing about what they find. It’s obvious that this lesson has riveted their interest. What’s not so obvious is that it has been as much about literacy as about science.
In preparing for her class in human anatomy and physiology to perform the dissections, Karen Stewart had the students read articles on the brain’s structure and use computer-presentation software to share what they learned. She used “guided notetaking” strategies, explicitly teaching the teenagers how to read the materials and take notes on key scientific concepts. She reinforced those ideas with more articles chosen to grab their interest, such as one on how chocolate affects the brain.
The class also watched and discussed a recent episode of the hit television show “Grey’s Anatomy,” about a patient with an injury to one side of the brain. The students’ work is graded not just on their grasp of the science, but also on the quality of their research and writing about it.
Ms. Stewart isn’t the only teacher who weaves literacy instruction into classes here at Buckhorn High School. It pops up on every corridor. A teacher of Spanish shows his students a self-portrait of the Mexican painter Frida Kahlo and asks what cues it conveys about her culture. A physical education teacher brings his class to the school library to study body mass. And a mathematics teacher burrows into the Latin roots of that discipline’s vocabulary to help students see their related meanings, and uses “concept maps”–visual depictions of ideas–to help them grasp an idea’s steps or parts.
Literacy is shot through everything at this 1,350-student Alabama school in a former cotton field 10 miles south of the Tennessee state line. It’s been an obsession for a decade, ever since school leaders tested their students and found that one-third of the entering freshmen were reading at or below the 7th grade level, many at the 4th or 5th grade level.
“Those numbers completely changed my professional life,” said Sarah Fanning, who oversees curriculum and instruction at Buckhorn High. “I couldn’t eat. I couldn’t sleep. Each of those numbers had a face, and that face went to bed with me at night.”
‘Relentless From the Beginning’
The Buckhorn staff immersed itself in figuring out how to improve student learning by boosting literacy skills in all subjects, something few high schools do now, and even fewer were doing then. That work has made the school a national model. Hosting visitors and making presentations–including at a White House conference in 2006–have become routine parts of its staff members’ schedules.
Adolescent-literacy work such as that at Buckhorn High is taking on a rising profile nationally, as educators search for ways to improve student achievement. Increasingly, scholars urge teachers to abandon the “inoculation” model of literacy, which holds that K-3 students “learn to read,” and older students “read to learn.” Older students are in dire need of sophisticated reading and writing instruction tailored to each discipline, those scholars say, and without it, they risk being unable to access more-complex material. The Carnegie Corporation of New York recently released a report urging that adolescent literacy become a national priority. (“Literacy Woes Put in Focus,” Sept. 23, 2009.)
Selected literacy resources at Buckhorn High School:
Professional Reading
Reading Reminders, Jim Burke
Deeper Reading, Kelly Gallagher
Content Area Reading, Richard R. Vacca and Jo Anne L. Vacca
I Read It, But I Don’t Get It, Cris Tovani
Do I Really Have to Teach Reading? Cris Tovani
Wordless Picture Books
Anno’s Journey, Mitsumasa Anno
Free Fall, David Wiesner
Tuesday, David Wiesner
Freight Train, Donald Crews
Zoom, Istvan Banyai
Content-Area Picture Books and Graphic Novels
Chester Comix series, Bentley Boyd
Just Plain Fancy, Patricia Polacco
Harlem, Walter Dean Myers
The Greedy Triangle, Marilyn Burns
High-Interest, Easy-to-Understand Books for Adolescents
A Child Called “It,” Dave Pelzer
Hole in My Life, Jack Gantos
Crank, Ellen Hopkins
Burned, Ellen Hopkins
The “Twilight Saga” collection, Stephenie Meyer
The “Soundings” and “Currents” series, Orca Publishing
The Bluford High series, Townsend Press
Source: Buckhorn High School
Forget about rating teachers—rate schools instead.
Those unfortunate people in the District may worry about the quality of their teachers, and wait anxiously for the results of the school system’s controversial new evaluation of classroom techniques and test score improvement. But those of us in the Washington area suburbs don’t have to worry because we already know that close to 100 percent of our teachers are entirely satisfactory. How? Our school districts say so.
I asked suburban school officials to share the latest results from their teacher evaluations, which are usually done by principals and subject specialists. Here are the percentages of teachers rated satisfactory, in some cases called meeting or exceeding the standard: Alexandria 99 percent, Calvert 99.8 percent, Charles 98.4 percent, Culpeper 97 percent, Fairfax 99.1 percent, Falls Church 99.55 percent, Loudoun 99 percent, Montgomery 95 percent, Prince George’s 95.56 percent, and Prince William 98.3 percent.
Anne Arundel, Arlington, Fauquier and Howard, and Manassas City say they don’t collect such data. Carroll says it is doing it for the first time and hasn’t finished yet.
Those numbers in the high 90s sound good, but they don’t impress some advocates of better teaching. Near perfect teacher evaluation passing rates are common throughout the country.
One reason why D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee has launched her complex IMPACT evaluation of the District’s teachers is that the research and training organization she founded, the New Teacher Project, is a sworn enemy of those standard evaluation systems. Since teacher ratings in most districts are as discerning as peewee soccer award night, with everyone getting a trophy, why bother?
Bill stirs debate on religion, school
proposal before Massachusetts lawmakers aimed at protecting students who voice religious views at public schools is being assailed by advocates of separation of church and state, who say it forces religion on people.
Critics also argue it would open a backdoor for teaching creationism.
But the bill’s sponsors say opponents are misreading the measure. They say it would simply ensure the existing free speech rights of religious students that are sometimes neglected at schools around the country. “What we’re trying to do with this bill is create an even playing field,” said Evelyn Reilly of the Massachusetts Family Institute, which wrote the bill.
The bill has bipartisan backing and is pending before the Legislature’s Joint Committee on Education.
Press Release: Wisconsin Governor Doyle Signs Education “Reform” Laws
Governor Doyle’s Office [PDF]:
Governor Jim Doyle today signed into law Senate Bills 370, 371, 372 and 373, which take the first steps toward reforming education in Wisconsin and ensuring every student has a chance to succeed. Governor Doyle signed the laws at Wright Middle School just days after President Obama visited the school to call for states to make significant education reform. The bills take important steps to align Wisconsin with federal education reform goals laid out by the President and position Wisconsin to compete for Race to the Top funds.
“I want to thank state legislative leaders for acting swiftly to take these critical first steps toward major education reform,” Governor Doyle said. “We are really proud of our state’s great schools but we know we have to step it up and strive to reach the highest levels. We must continue moving forward reforms that put our students first and answer President Obama’s challenge to race to the top.”
The Governor will continue to work closely with the Legislature to move forward reform efforts to create clear lines of accountability at Milwaukee Public Schools, strengthen the State Superintendent’s ability to turn around struggling schools and raise math and science standards so every student can compete in the global economy.
The end of false choices on schools
Colorado State Senator Michael Johnston:
When President Barack Obama spoke to education groups on the campaign trail, he said he didn’t believe in the false choices currently offered by the education debate. He didn’t believe that it was a choice between supporting unions or supporting charters. He didn’t believe it was about striving for either equity or excellence.
Instead, Obama reiterated that this moment in education is about moving beyond ideology and moving toward results. What matters is not whether a kid goes to a charter school or a district school or a magnet school; what matters is they go to a good school. What matters is not whether a child has a union teacher or a non-union teacher; what matters is that every child has an effective teacher.
The recent DPS school board elections have been miscast as a referendum on the false choice Obama sought to dispel. In the aftermath, it is important to focus on what has actually driven both Denver and Colorado’s educational improvements in recent years and how that illuminates the road ahead.
Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has been the perfect national symbol of this clear-eyed pragmatism, with a relentless focus on results. Long before he was a Cabinet member, Duncan found himself caught in a classic version of this false choice Obama dismissed. There were two competing groups of educators that released their own set of principles to guide the Obama presidency. One group was backed by “reformers” who insisted that the system needed radical changes to make sure we recruited, retained and released educators based on merit. The other was backed by a set of “union leaders” who argued that we must attend to the out-of-school variables that impact learning, including more counseling, support services and professional development.
What’s Really up With Online Study Scholarships?
I must have landed on an Internet marketing list, because I receive so many e-mails pitching my chances to win a scholarship to an online college. Like: “Hey, mom, apply for a full-tuition scholarship, earn your degree and have a career!” Are these scholarships for real? — B.R.
A few people will win these scholarships, but the advertised financial-aid awards are really hooks cast by companies in the lead-aggregation industry. They’re marketing ploys.
Notice that virtually all the schools offering these scholarships are for-profit colleges. Higher-education experts tell me that on average, online for-profit colleges cost three times more than online nonprofit colleges.
Here’ the inside story. Lead-generating marketers require scholarship seekers to provide their personal information on a scholarship application — in reality, a “lead form.” The marketers aggregate the forms and sell them to participating schools at a price of up to $100 per qualified lead. It’s little wonder that you’re receiving so many scholarship pitches.
Blame parents, not SATs, for inequities
This is in response to a “Teen Rant” of Oct. 18 by Lizzie Logan, who complained about SAT tests. Lizzie believes that the tests are unfair because they give an advantage to students from rich families. Here is what I’d like to tell Lizzie:
Yes, Virginia, the colleges do prefer knowledgeable students who are already fluent in trigonometry and calculus, who have a reasonably rich lexicon and who can convey their thoughts in the form of an essay. Otherwise, the students will have to spend two out of four college years taking remedial classes. Our society does not need engineers who study engineering subjects proper for only the two remaining years.
Charter schools are one strategy, not a cure-all
Madison School Board Member Ed Hughes:
The State Journal’s call for more charter schools in the editorial welcoming the president to Madison was a bit off the mark.
A charter school is not an end in itself – it’s a means to achieve an end. If there are impediments to learning that we’re unable to address, or opportunities for improvement that we’re unable to provide through our neighborhood schools, then a charter could be an effective way to address the issue
For example, I’d be interested in a charter proposal designed to attack our achievement gap by providing a more intense academic focus in a longer school day and longer school year for students who are behind. But if a charter idea lacks that sort of vital justification, then for me there’s insufficient reason to deviate from our traditional neighborhood school approach.
The same is true for the school district’s recently-adopted strategic plan. More charter schools is not a goal, it’s a strategy. If charters can be an effective means of achieving our goals of improving academic outcomes for all students and ensuring student engagement and effective student support, for example, we should and likely will consider them.
As I understood the president’s remarks at Wright, this approach is consistent with the laudable goals he described.
– Ed Hughes, member, Madison School Board
Three’s a crowd when it comes to Los Angeles Eastside schools
Things were a bit discombobulated last week on the Eastside, where a generations-old allegiance to Roosevelt Senior High School has been upset by a new relative: the recently opened Felicitas and Gonzalo Mendez Learning Center.
At Roosevelt, hallways shimmered with gold and crimson banners hung in anticipation of the biggest football game of the season, against Garfield High School.
At the new Mendez high school — populated by many students transferred from Roosevelt’s overcrowded campus — the walls were bare; the gymnasium empty.
At Roosevelt, students celebrated spirit week and crowned a homecoming queen.
At Mendez, students felt unsure about their newly selected mascot, the jaguar. There were murmurs of school spirit. But there is no football team, no cheerleading squad, no queen to crown.
“We’re starting with nothing,” said Michael Mena, 15.
Madison Teachers, staff trying the ‘Wright way’
Doug Erickson & Gayle Worland:
Founded in 1993 as Madison Middle School 2000, the school alleviated crowding in the West High School attendance area and served as a hopeful sign to the ethnically diverse South Side, which lacked a middle school. The school moved to its building at 1717 Fish Hatchery Road (Panoramic view) in 1997 and was renamed for the late Rev. James C. Wright, a prominent local black pastor and civil rights leader.
The school’s early years were marred by lax discipline, high staff turnover, the resignation of the original principal and clashes among parents and teachers over governance. Stability arrived in 1998 with Ed Holmes, whose six-year tenure as principal earned praise from many parents and students.
“I would characterize (Wright) as one of the district’s grand experiments,” said Holmes, now West High principal.
As a charter school, students choose it; no one is assigned there. Enrollment is capped at 255, and classes rarely exceed 20 students. The school’s mission stresses civic engagement, social action and multicultural pride.
Related: Wright economically disadvantaged WKCE test scores compared to other Madison middle schools. Notes and links on President Obama’s recent visit to Madison’s Wright Middle School.
Madison School District Strategic Plan Action Steps & Budget Recommendations
Superintendent Dan Nerad [1.5MB PDF]:
Included in the 2009/10 budget is $324,123 for the implementation of activities specifically related to the approved Strategic Plan.
Attached are:
Strategic Plan: Objectives organized by Priority 1 Action Steps
Strategic Objectives: Action Steps, Priority 1 Recommended Budget.
The total identified in the Priority 1 Recommended Budget is $284,925.
We are continuing to plan in the areas of:
- implementing Individual Learning Plans,
- using ACT Standards as part of assessments,
- supporting technology,
- program evaluation, and
- a possible expulsion abeyance options pilot for second semester.
Budget recommendations for these areas will come to the Board at a later date.
More:
The electronic based ILP (Individual Learning Plan) developed in collaboration with University of Wisconsin staff to meet the unique needs ofthe MMSD. The ILP will be based off of the WisCareers platform which will interface with Infinite Campus, the District’s information management system.
Identify a subgroup of the ILP Action Team to create an ILP implementation plan that includes a mechanism for feedback and evaluation (e.g., Survey instruments, external evaluation conducted by the Wisconsin Center for Educational Research).
Curriculum Action Plan Focus Areas
- Accelerated Learning
- Assessment
- Civic Engagement
- Cultural Relevance
- Flexible Instruction
Related: Proposed Madison School District Strategic Plan Performance Measures.
Obama’s subtle message spoke volumes about Milwaukee schools
The only way President Barack Obama could have been any more indirect about his message on Wednesday in a speech at a middle school in Madison was by giving it in another state.
He never mentioned Milwaukee, he barely mentioned Wisconsin. It might seem hard to be boring when you’re talking about giving away billions of dollars to places that shake up their education systems, but Obama succeeded, so much so that a Washington Post story described his speech as “turgid.”
And yet, there was a very pointed message in there, aimed right at Wisconsin and Milwaukee. How do I know? Arne Duncan told me so.
Being president may mean rarely being able to say what’s really on your mind, but, in a telephone interview after the speech, the outspoken secretary of education was more than willing to tread almost all the places his boss didn’t want to go.
In short, the message of the visit was: Get with the program, Wisconsin.
Demerit Pay
In the spirit of generosity I’ve been thanking the gods that private school teachers’ salaries are not connected to students’ standardized test scores. Else Malia Obama’s science teacher at the Sidwell Friends School might have lost her job faster than you can say “grade inflation.”
On November 3, 2009, the one-year anniversary of his election, President Obama, speaking at a middle school in Madison, Wisconsin, told his audience that First Daughter Malia had recently come home from school with a 73 on a science test, but after renewed educational vigor she aced her next test. This was the same day President Obama reiterated his call for public school teachers’ merit pay to be based in part on student performance on standardized tests.
I’m a 17-year veteran English teacher in the Los Angeles Unified School District, so naturally I thought, “Yep, change has finally come.”
After numbing my students with No Child Left Behind tests for the past seven years, I can now depend on Secretary of Education Arne Duncan to turn it all around.
But Secretary Duncan’s not going to hand over any federal grant money willy-nilly. No sir. No money changes hands until the states beat down those all-powerful teacher unions (and if you want to see how powerful teacher unions are, just drive by your local public school and check out the cars in the faculty parking lot. The Cash for Clunkers program rejected my 1997 Toyota Corolla and most of my colleagues’ cars as well)
Spotlight on schools
Wisconsin State Journal Editorial:
President Barack Obama handed out some difficult assignments Wednesday at a Madison middle school.
Elected leaders, educators, parents and students need to get these tasks done. The future of Wisconsin and our nation is at stake.
Obama didn’t sugar coat what needs to occur. He talked tough about closing failing schools and firing bad teachers. He told parents and students they were more responsible than anyone for student success, which hinges on high expectations and follow-through.
Yet the “educator in chief” also offered reassurance and rewards, including a chance to win hundreds of millions of dollars in competitive grants.
It’s time to act.
A day after Obama’s visit to Wright Middle School on Madison’s South Side, the Wisconsin Legislature barely approved a bill allowing student test scores to be used in teacher evaluations – something Obama specifically called for. Obama’s Education Secretary Arne Duncan had called Wisconsin’s ban on tying teachers to test data “ridiculous.”
Virtual schools chart new course
Representatives of five would-be virtual charter schools will file into the administrative towers of the Georgia Department of Education today to pitch their brand of public education, which lets students study at home computers in their pajamas.
Some contenders will come with national representatives from education management companies touting their records of student achievement in other states. Some will rely on the moms and dads who sit on the boards of petitioning schools to make their case.
If they’re successful, they stand to be funded just as any other Georgia public school. Some state officials, however, aren’t ready to prop open the door of school choice and let more cyber campuses in without first doing more homework on the subject.
Will 21st century skills weaken our federal education programs?
The Common Core blog, which shares my distrust of the 21st century skills movement, is warning about the appointment of Apple executive Karen Cator as head of the U.S. Education Department’s Office of Education Technology. I don’t know Cator. Common Core says she once chaired the board of the Partnership for 21st Century Skills, the movement’s leading organization, and might push their agenda in Washington. I think the partnership is led by well-intentioned people, but so far they have done a lousy job showing how their approach will improve schools.
My recent column about a book by two partnership leaders made this case in more detail. Lynne Munson and James Elias, who wrote the Common Core post about Cator, seem to think she would use her new job to divert more education dollars to technology companies and forget about giving students a deep and balanced education.
How Do Students at Wright Compare to Their Peers at Other MMSD Middle Schools?
Via Jeff Henriques:
Examining the performance of only economically disadvantaged students in 8th grade, after two years and a quarter at Wright Middle School, compared with other MMSD middle schools.
Click for a larger view:
A Few Comments from Madison Mayor Dave Cieslewicz on President Obama’s Visit
Madison Mayor Dave Cieslewicz:
The last sitting President to visit Madison didn’t have a plane. This one had a very big plane, which pulled to a stop in Madison right on time (The commander of the 115th Fighter Wing, Col. Joseph Brandemuehl told me that Air Force One is never more than two minutes off schedule). It was fitting that he came here to give a serious policy speech about education and that he visited a Madison public school with both high diversity and high achievement. And it was an honor to host the President one year after his election. All in all, it was experience those kids – and most of the rest of us – will never forget.
At the school the President did trip a little on the pronunciation of my name. But this is his third attempt and he’s getting closer each time. And here’s the thing. When the President of the United States mispronounces your name you don’t think ‘gee, I wish that guy would get it right.’ No. You think, ‘gee, the President tried to pronounce my name.’
This job has its long days and its share of difficult stretches but once in awhile you get a moment that is just undeniably cool. As we waited for President Obama to walk down the stairs from Air Force One, I was thinking about the last time I was at that spot. It was exactly five years ago when I got a ride with the Colonel in an F-16. Taking a flight in a fighter jet or greeting the leader of the free world qualifies as one of those times when I take a moment to thank the voters of Madison for giving me the chance to be there on their behalf. This is not a job that lacks interesting days, but yesterday is one I’ll remember long after someone else gets the honor of saying, “Welcome to Madison, Mr. President.”
Has Federal Involvement Improved America’s Schools?
The No Child Left Behind Act is up for renewal. It costs taxpayers tens of billions of dollars every year but the Obama administration is giving its reauthorization less serious attention than most people pay to their phone bill. Families facing tight budgets actually consider cancelling a service that doesn’t benefit them. (“Do I really need a landline if I already have a cell phone?”) But ending federal involvement in k-12 schooling is not something that education secretary Arne Duncan is even willing to talk about.
Here are three good reasons why we need to have that conversation:
First, we have little to show for the nearly $2 trillion dollars spent on federal education programs since 1965. As the chart demonstrates, federal education spending per pupil has nearly tripled since 1970 in real, inflation-adjusted dollars — but achievement has barely budged. In fact, the only subject in which achievement at the end of high school has changed by more than 1 percent is science, and it has gotten worse.
This overall average masks some tiny gains for minority children, such as a 3 to 5 percent rise in the scores of African American 17-year-olds. But even these modest improvements can’t be attributed to federal spending. Almost all of the gain occurred between 1980 and 1988, a period during which federal spending per pupil actually fell. And the scores of African American 17-year-olds have declined in the twenty years since, even as federal spending has shot through the roof.
Wisconsin Legislature Passes (47-46!) Education “Reform” Bills: Teachers Cannot Be Disciplined or Removed using Test Data
The Wisconsin Legislature passed a series of education reform bills designed to make the state compete for nearly $4.5 billion in federal stimulus money.
The Assembly voted 47 to 46 in favor of the reform bills around 3 a.m. on Friday morning after a long closed door meeting among Democrats. The Senate approved the measures earlier on Thursday.
The action came after President Barack Obama came to Madison on Wednesday to tout the Race to the Top grant program.
One of the bills would create a system to track student data from preschool through college. A second bill would tie teacher evaluation to student performance on standardized tests. Another bill would require all charter schools to be created under federal guidelines. The last bill would move grants awarded to Milwaukee Public Schools for student achievement to move from Department of Administration to Department of Public Instruction control.
The bills remove a prohibition in state law from using student test data to evaluate teachers.
Even with it removed, teachers could not be disciplined or removed based on student test scores. And the teacher evaluation process would have to be part of collective bargaining.
Republicans argued that means most schools won’t even attempt to use the test data when evaluating teachers. Attempts by them to alter the bill were defeated by Democrats.
Senate Republicans expressed concern about the teacher evaluation portion, saying collective bargaining could become a hurdle to the Race to the Top guidelines and that teachers should also be disciplined or fired based on standardized testing results, not only rewarded.
“(Obama) said we have to be bold in holding people accountable for the achievement of our schools. Well, trust me, if we pass this legislation requiring mandatory negotiations we’re not bold, we’re a joke,” said Sen. Luther Olson, R-Ripon.
Four education bills aimed at bolstering the state’s application for federal Race to the Top funds were also moved through the Legislature. In the Assembly, passage of a bill allowing the use of student performance on standardized tests to be used in evaluating teachers. Republicans objected to the bill because they say it requires school districts to negotiate how the data is used in the teacher evaluations and would tie the hands of administrators who seek to discipline or dismiss poor performing teachers.
The bill barely passed the Assembly on a 47-46 vote.
The Assembly session wrapped up at about 4 a.m.
It will be interesting to see how these bills look, in terms of special interest influence, once Governor Doyle signs them. I do – possibly – like the student data tracking from preschool through college. Of course, the evaluations may be weak and the content may change rendering the results useless. We’ll see.
In related news, Madison School Board Vice President Lucy Mathiak again raised the issue of evaluating math curriculum effectiveness via University of Wisconsin System entrance exam results and college placement at the 11/2/2009 Madison School Board meeting. This request has fallen on deaf ears within the MMSD Administration for some time. [Madison School Board Math Discussion 40MB mp3 audio (Documents and links).]
75% of Potential Military Recruits Too Fat, Too Sickly, Too Dumb to Serve
More than three-quarters of the nation’s 17- to 24-year-olds couldn’t serve in the military, even if they wanted to. They’re too fat, too sickly, too dumb, have too many kids, or have copped to using illegal drugs.
The armed services are willing to grant waivers for some of those conditions – asthma, or a little bit of weed. But the military’s biggest concern is how big and how weak its potential recruits have become.
“The major component of this is obesity,” Curt Gilroy, the Pentagon’s director of accessions, tells Army Times’ William McMichael. “Kids are just not able to do push-ups… And they can’t do pull-ups. And they can’t run.”
23 percent of 18- to 34-year-old are now obese, up from just six percent in 1987.
The group of potential enlistees is further slimmed by the “propensity to serve” among American youths, which social scientists say also is declining. According to Gilroy, research shows that about 12 percent of all U.S. military-eligible youth show an interest in military service.
Ford Foundation gives $100 million to reform urban high schools
The Ford Foundation pledged $100 million Wednesday to “transform” urban high schools in the United States, focusing on seven cities, including Los Angeles.
The seven-year initiative is among the largest philanthropic efforts aimed at improving education in the United States and, as described, could both complement and challenge aspects of the Obama administration’s education reform efforts. It will fund research and reform in four areas: teacher quality, student assessment, a longer school day and year, and school funding.
The initiative is being led by Jeannie Oakes, who until recently was head of the Institute for Democracy, Education, and Access at UCLA, where she was a strong advocate for reform aimed at helping disadvantaged students in the Los Angeles Unified School District. Besides Los Angeles, the Ford Foundation effort will focus on schools in New York, Newark, N.J., Philadelphia, Chicago, Detroit and Denver.
Oakes said the foundation has already begun working with L.A. Unified Supt. Ramon C. Cortines to find ways to better distribute finances in the district. She said Ford also hopes to help Los Angeles land one of the Obama administration’s “Promise Neighborhood” grants, which place public schools at the center of a comprehensive strategy of combating poverty and improving educational achievement.
Will State Education Reforms Get a Boost from Obama?
When, if ever, has a president of the United States inserted himself as directly into a legislative issue in Wisconsin as President Barack Obama is doing by visiting Madison on Wednesday? Obama’s visit to a middle school a couple miles from the State Capitol will focus on education – and it comes as Gov. Jim Doyle and others are ramping up their push for a series of educational reforms, including giving much of the power over Milwaukee Public Schools to Milwaukee’s mayor.
Obama and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, who will be with him, are firm supporters of many of the ideas being incorporated into the legislative package. Wisconsin clearly has to make changes such as these if it wants a decent chance at a share of the $5 billion in the Race to the Top money and other incentive funds Obama and Duncan will distribute over the next couple years.
It appears highly likely a special session of the Legislature will be called in November to consider the education proposals. The outcome is not clear.
Crossing the Finish Line: Completing College at America’s Public Universities
William G. Bowen, Matthew M. Chingos & Michael S. McPherson:
Long revered for their dedication to equal opportunity and affordability, public universities play a crucial role in building our country’s human capital. And yet–a sobering fact–less than 60 percent of the students entering four-year colleges in America today are graduating. Why is this happening and what can be done? Crossing the Finish Line, the most important book on higher education to appear since The Shape of the River, provides the most detailed exploration ever of the crisis of college completion at America’s public universities. This groundbreaking book sheds light on such serious issues as dropout rates linked to race, gender, and socioeconomic status.
Probing graduation rates at twenty-one flagship public universities and four statewide systems of public higher education, the authors focus on the progress of students in the entering class of 1999–from entry to graduation, transfer, or withdrawal. They examine the effects of parental education, family income, race and gender, high school grades, test scores, financial aid, and characteristics of universities attended (especially their selectivity). The conclusions are compelling: minority students and students from poor families have markedly lower graduation rates–and take longer to earn degrees–even when other variables are taken into account. Noting the strong performance of transfer students and the effects of financial constraints on student retention, the authors call for improved transfer and financial aid policies, and suggest ways of improving the sorting processes that match students to institutions.
Crossing the Finish Line has things to say about virtually every important factor in college life, but by far the most important thing is this:
The SAT and ACT do not matter in predicting college success.
I have been an unequivocal supporter of using the SAT/ACT* in making college admissions decisions (see here and here), but this sample of students and the rigor of this study are impossible to ignore. Here’s what the authors found:
- Taken separately, high school GPA is a better predictor of college graduation rates than SAT/ACT score. This findings holds true across institution type, and gets stronger the less selective an institution is. High school GPA is three to five times more important in predicting college graduation than SAT/ ACT score.
- SAT and ACT scores are proxies for high school quality. When the authors factored in which high schools students attended (i.e. high school quality), the predictive power of high school GPA went up, and the predictive power of SAT/ ACT scores fell below zero.
- High school quality mattered, but not nearly as much as the student’s GPA. Other research, most notably on Texas’ ten percent admission rule, has proven this before. It’s somewhat counter-intuitive, but it shows that a student’s initiative to succeed, complete their work, and jump any hurdles that come up matters more than the quality of their high school.
Schooling for Sustainability
SMART By NATURE: Schooling for Sustainability — a new book from the Center for Ecoliteracy. It describes the significance of the emerging green schools sector across the country.
Bringing Bioneers to Wisconsin
Green Schools National Conference
Tales From Planet Earth
Going GREEN?
Education / Evolving Disrupting Class
Network of EdVisions Schools
Audubon Center Charter Schools
NewSchoolsAmerica
Alliance for the Great Lakes
Collaborative for Sustainability Education
What’s NEXT?
Join the Green Charter Schools Network as an organization member and we’ll send you a FREE copy of SMART By NATURE. Click organization membership form.
“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.”
Milwaukee Public School system in serious need of repair
Helen Lovejoy is more than a minister’s wife. She is an icon, the yellow-faced bulldog behind one of society’s most enduringly annoying mantras:
Won’t somebody please think of the children?
In Milwaukee, this cry often falls on deaf ears. The Milwaukee Public School system is less an educational structure than it is a punch line on fail blog. Students are performing far below expected levels, resources are few, and ultimately too few people are thinking about the children.
Fortunately, Gov. Doyle decided to step in. Knowing there needed to be a change in MPS, and potentially motivated by a larger desire to make Wisconsin attractive for the Obama administration’s Race To The Top grants, Doyle announced a bill that would take significant authority away from the school board and put it in the hands of Milwaukee’s mayor. These powers, which include the ability to select the superintendent and set the annual tax levy, should not be taken lightly, and one would hope a busy mayor would find adequate time to thoroughly look at the city’s public school system. After all, if you have time to lose a fight at a state fair, you can budget a few days to deal with education.
NJ gov.-elect renews pledge to improve education
New Jersey’s next governor, making his first post-Election Day appearance at a thriving charter school in the state’s largest city, renewed a campaign pledge to reform urban education.
Chris Christie, speaking to grade-schoolers in green uniforms who addressed him as “Governor Chris,” used the event at the Robert Treat Academy in Newark’s North Ward to demonstrate his commitment to improving education and reducing crime in New Jersey’s cities.
“When I had to decide what I was going to do with my day, the day I was elected governor, there was no place else I wanted to be than here with all of you,” Christie said. “And I knew, because I was just elected yesterday, that all these people would come,” he said referring to the reporters and photographers who ringed the podium in the school’s auditorium.
The visit was also politically symbolic for the Republican governor-elect: the school was founded by Essex County Democratic Party boss Steve Adubato Sr.
A hoarse and worn-looking Christie was joined by Adubato, Newark Mayor Cory Booker and Essex County Executive Joe DiVincenzo Jr., also Democrats. Christie said he was sending a message that his new administration would encourage bipartisan cooperation but is not afraid to fight for his principles.
Booker seemed eager to accept Christie’s offer.
“Politics is over,” said the mayor, who campaigned hard for Gov. Jon Corzine. “I’ve got to find partners for progress.”
Obama calls for end of ‘firewall’ rules that shield teachers
Declaring there should be “no excuse for mediocrity” in public schools, President Obama on Wednesday pledged to push for recruitment of better teachers, better pay for those who succeed and dismissal of those who let their students down.
When principals are trying to determine which teachers are doing well, he said, they should be able to consider student performance as part of the evaluation.
And when schools are failing, “they should be shut down,” Obama said. “But when innovative public schools are succeeding, they shouldn’t be stifled, they should be supported.”
The president’s tough words came as Obama spoke to students and teachers at a charter middle school in Wisconsin’s capital, Madison. But as he announced the criteria by which states can win grants from his Department of Education’s $4.35-billion “Race to the Top” fund, Obama spelled out standards that depart from conventional Democratic dogma.
For one thing, Obama called for the abolition of “firewall” rules, which prevent many schools from judging teacher performance based on student performance.
Comments on Obama & Race to the Top
The Department of Education will be accepting proposals for projects aimed at four reform areas:
To reverse the pervasive dumbing-down of academic standards and assessments by states, Race to the Top winners need to work toward adopting common, internationally bench marked K-12 standards that prepare students for success in college and careers.
To close the data gap — which now handcuffs districts from tracking growth in student learning and improving classroom instruction — states will need to monitor advances in student achievement and identify effective instructional practices. To boost the quality of teachers and principals, especially in high-poverty schools and hard-to-staff subjects, states and districts should be able to identify effective teachers and principals — and have strategies for rewarding and retaining more top-notch teachers and improving or replacing ones who aren’t up to the job. Finally, to turn around the lowest-performing schools, states and districts must be ready to institute far-reaching reforms, from replacing staff and leadership to changing the school culture There is one issue standing in the way for Wisconsin: a state law that prevents standardized test results from being used to evaluate teachers, which makes WI ineligible for “Race to the Top” funds. A bill in the legislature aims to repeal that law.
Teacher Performance: White House Press Gaggle by Secretary of Education Arne Duncan Aboard Air Force One 11/4/2009
Q Secretary Duncan, can you articulate why it’s important to link student achievement data with teacher performance, and also why it’s important to lift these caps on the charter schools?
SECRETARY DUNCAN: I’ll take one at a time. On the first one — it’s amazing, I always use the California example because California is a big state — California has 300,000 teachers — 300,000 teachers. The top 10 percent, the top 30,000 teachers in California, would be world-class, would be among the best teachers in the world. The bottom 10 percent in California, the bottom 30,000, probably need to find another line of work, another profession. And nobody can tell you of those 300,000 teachers who’s in what category. There’s no recognition.
And so what I fundamentally believe is that great teaching matters and we need to be able to identify those teachers who routinely are making an extraordinary difference in students’ lives. And to say that teaching has no impact on student performance, on student achievement, just absolutely makes no sense to me. It absolutely degrades the profession.
So the counterargument — so right now as a country basically zero percent of student achievement relates to teacher evaluation. I think that’s a problem. I also think 100 percent — if all you do is look at a test score to evaluate a teacher, I think that’s a problem. So zero is a problem; 100 is a problem. As a country, we’re here, we’re trying to move to a middle point where you would evaluate teachers on multiple measures — that’s really important — not just on a single test score, but, yes, student achievement would be a part of what you look at in evaluating a teacher.
And so whether it’s an individual teacher, whether it’s a school, whether it’s a school district, whether it’s a state, the whole thing as a country we need to do is we need to accelerate the rate of change. We have to get better faster. And there are teachers every single year — just to give you an illustration — there are teachers every single year where the average child in their class is gaining two years of growth — two years of growth per year of instruction. That is herculean work. Those teachers are the unsung heroes in our society. And nobody can tell you who those teachers are.
There are some schools that do that, not just one miraculous teacher or one miraculous student. There are schools that year after year produce students that are showing extraordinary gains. Shouldn’t we know that? Isn’t that something valuable? Shouldn’t we be learning from them?
And the flip side of it, if you have teachers or schools where students are falling further and further behind each year, I think we need to know that as well. And so we just want to have an open, honest conversation, but at the end of the day, teachers should never be evaluated on a single test score. I want to be absolutely clear there should always be multiple measures. But student achievement has to be a piece of what teachers are evaluated on.
And there’s a recent study that came out, The New Teacher Project, that talked about this Widget Effect where 99 percent of teachers were rated as superior. It’s not reality.
On your second point, on charter caps, I’ve been really clear I’m not a fan of charter schools, I’m a fan of good charter schools. And what we need in this country is just more good schools. We need more good elementary, more good middle, more good high schools. No second grader knows whether they’re going to a charter school, or a gifted school, or traditional school, or magnet school. They know, does my teacher care about me? Am I safe? Is there high expectations? Does the principal know who I am?
We need more good schools. And where you have — where you have good charters, we need to replicate them and to learn from them and to grow. Where you have bad charters, we need to close them down and hold them accountable. And so this is not let a thousand flowers bloom, this is trying to take what is being successful and grow.
And what I would say is if something is working, if you reduce — we talked about the graduation rate, if you’re doing something to reduce the dropout rate and increase the graduation rate, would you put a cap on that strategy? Would you ever say that we’re going to cap the number of students who can take AP classes this year? We’re going to limit the number of kids who take — we’re going to limit the number of kids that graduate? We would never do that.
So if something is working, if that innovation is helping us get better, why would you put an artificial cap on it? So let’s let that innovation flourish, but at the same time actually have a high bar and hold folks accountable.
So I was a big fan of successful charter schools in Chicago when I was a superintendent there, but I also closed three charter schools for academic failure. And you need both. Good charters are a big piece of the answer. Bad charters perpetuate the status quo and we need to challenge that.
Prior to the President’s visit, I emailed a number of elected officials and education stakeholders seeking commentary on the Wright Middle School visit. One of my inquiries went to the Wisconsin Charter Schools Association. I asked for a statement on charters in Madison. They declined to make a public statement, which, perhaps is a statement in and of itself.
Remarks by The President and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan in Discussion with Students
1:05 P.M. CST
SECRETARY DUNCAN: Well, we’re thrilled to be here and this is a school that’s getting better and better, and you guys are working really, really hard. And we’ve been lucky. We have a President here who has got a tough, tough job. Being President is tough without the — he’s fighting two wars, a really, really tough economy — I like your shirt.
STUDENT: Thanks. (Laughter.)
SECRETARY DUNCAN: And what amazes me is that week after week, month after month, he just keeps coming back to education, and he’s absolutely passionate about it. He and his wife, the First Lady Michelle Obama, received great educations. Neither one was born with a lot of money, but they worked really hard and had great teachers and great principals and made the most of it. And now he’s our President. So it’s a pretty remarkable journey. The only reason he’s the President is because he got a great education.
So we’re thrilled to be here. He might want to say a few things, and looks like you guys have questions for him. And so we’ll be quick and we’ll open up to your questions.
THE PRESIDENT: Well, it is good to see all of you. Thanks so much for having us.
First of all, I’ve got a great Secretary of Education in Arne Duncan. So he helps school districts all across the country in trying to figure out how to improve what’s going on in the schools. And let me just pick up on something that Arne said earlier.
I was really lucky to have a great education. I didn’t have a lot of money. My parents weren’t famous. In fact, my father left when I was two years old, so I really didn’t grow up with a father in the house; mostly it was my mom and my grandparents. But they always emphasized education and they were able to send me to good schools, and by working hard I was obviously in a position to do some good stuff.
My wife, Michelle, same thing. She grew up on the South Side of Chicago. Her dad was actually disabled, he had multiple sclerosis, but he still worked every day in a blue collar job. And her mom didn’t work, and when she did she was a secretary. But because she worked really hard in school she ended up getting a scholarship to Princeton and to Harvard Law School and ended up really being able to achieve a lot.
So that’s the reason why we are spending a lot of time talking to folks like you, because we want all of you to understand that there’s nothing more important than what you’re doing right here at this school. And Wright has a great reputation, this school is improving all the time, but ultimately how good a school is depends on how well you guys are doing.
And the main message that I just wanted to deliver to you is, every single one of you could be doing the same kinds of things that Arne is doing or I’m doing or you could be running a company or you can be inventing a product or you could — look, anything you can imagine, you can accomplish, but the only way you do it is if you’re succeeding here in school. And we are spending a lot of money to try to improve school buildings and put computers in and make sure that your teachers are well trained and that they are getting the support they need.
So we’re working really hard to try to reform the schools, but ultimately what matters most is how badly you want a good education. If you think that somehow somebody is just going to — you can tilt your head and somebody is going to pour education in your ear, that’s just not how it works. The only way that you end up being in a position to achieve is if you want it, if inside you want it.
And part of the reason why we wanted to talk to you guys is, you’re right at the point now in your lives where what you do is really going to start mattering. My daughters are a little younger than you — Malia is 11, Sasha is eight — but when you’re in grade school, you’re playing — hopefully somebody is making sure you’re doing your homework when you get it, but to some degree you’re still just kind of learning how to learn.
By the time you get to middle school, you’re now going to be confronted with a lot of choices. You’re going to start entering those teenage years where there are a lot of distractions and in some places people will say you don’t need to worry about school or it’s uncool to be smart or — you know, all kinds of things. And, look, I’ll be honest, I went through some of that when I was in high school and I made some mistakes and had some setbacks.
So I just want everybody to understand right now that nothing is going to be more important to you than just being hungry for knowledge. And if all of you decide to do that, then there are going to be teachers and principals and secretaries of education who are going to be there to help you. So hopefully you guys will take that all to heart.
All right. Okay. Now we’re going to kick out everybody so I can let you — you guys can ask me all the really tough questions without having the press here.
END
1:09 P.M CST
Much more on the President’s visit to Madison’s Wright Middle School.
Background on President Obama’s trip to Madison’s Wright Middle School
www.whitehouse.gov, via a kind reader’s email:
DISCUSSION WITH STUDENTS WITH SECRETARY ARNE DUNCAN
JAMES C. WRIGHT MIDDLE SCHOOL
1:00 PM CDT
The President and Secretary Arne Duncan will meet with approximately 40 students at James C. Wright Middle School, one of two public charter schools in Madison, Wisconsin. The group of 6th, 7th and 8th graders was chosen based on teacher recommendation.
RACE TO THE TOP ANNOUNCEMENT
JAMES C. WRIGHT MIDDLE SCHOOL
1:30 PM CDT
The President will deliver remarks to students, parents, teachers, school officials and state/local leaders at James C. Wright Middle School on strengthening America’s education system and putting the interests of the nation’s students first. In coming weeks, states will be able to compete for a grant from one of the largest investments ever made in education – over $4 billion – the Race to the Top Fund. These grants will be made available to states committed to transforming the way we educate our kids so that they can develop a real plan to improve the quality of education across the nation.
The audience will be composed of approximately 500 Wright Middle School students, parents, teachers, and school officials as well as state and local leaders. Secretary Duncan will also be in attendance.
PARTICIPANTS
– Principal Nancy Evans will welcome students, parents and invited guests.
– Ari Davis (6th grade) will lead the Pledge of Allegiance.
– Miko Jobst (8th grade), Laura Sumi (7th grade), and Erika Meyer (orchestra teacher) will perform the National Anthem.
– Governor Jim Doyle will introduce the President.
BACKGROUND ON JAMES C. WRIGHT MIDDLE SCHOOL
The mission of the Wright Middle school is “to educate all students to develop the knowledge, skills and confidence required to participate fully in an evolving global society.” A public charter school established in 1997, the Wright school is the smallest and most ethnically and economically diverse middle school in Madison (38% African-American, 37% Latino, 13% White, and 86% low-income). The school also has a significant population of students with disabilities (22%) and English language learners (39%), and outpaces both the school district and statewide average achievement for both student subgroups.
Wright offers a core curriculum of language arts, social studies, math and science at each grade level, and provides enrichment courses in physical education, music, art, and technology. All grades at the school participate in a social action project focused on the environment at the sixth grade level; the economy at the seventh grade level; and government at the eighth grade level. Among the school’s signature reforms are a small and tailored instructional program; bilingual resource specialists (Spanish and Hmong languages); an academic acceleration program in literacy to support struggling 6th and 7th graders; and a mentorship and afterschool homework program.
Wright is also one of three middle schools in Madison that partners with the University of Madison in a teacher preparation program through an innovative model that pairs new teachers with veterans and delivers professional development and ongoing support.
Many Tennessee school districts get low marks on report card
The Tennessee Department of Education released its 2009 report card Tuesday.
State officials changed the way the TDEC “value added” and “achievement” report card scores were calculated this year.
“Because we have been on an aggressive path to improvement with the Tennessee Diploma Project,” Education Commissioner Timothy Webb said, “it was necessary to utilize this transition year to change our calculation methods and more accurately demonstrate student progress in an effort to pursue higher standards.”
Officials changed the baseline year used to compare student scores and achievement, and they’ve implemented a new grading scale that could see previously high A marks lowered to the B or C level, according to a TDEC release.
Referring to the scoring changes, Knox County Schools spokesperson Melissa Copelan, in a news release, said, “This makes comparison of the 2009 Report Card data with previous years’ scores not possible or valid.”
Bye-bye Arne: Why we don’t need an education secretary
Arne Duncan is the latest in a splendid crop of U.S. education secretaries over the last few decades. The ones I have known best include, in alphabetical order: Bill Bennett, Rod Paige, Dick Riley and Margaret Spellings–all fine people who care about kids and understand the issues. But I wish all of them had not spent valuable time trying to deal with the painfully slow pace and often politically-addled reasoning of national education policy. Their best work for kids, in my view, happened when they were NOT education secretary. So let’s abolish the office and get that talent back where it belongs, where school change really happens, in our states and cities.
Secretary Duncan is going to reject this idea immediately, and I know why. He took the job because his friend the president needed him. Both are from Chicago, and know how much that city has struggled to improve its schools. The president, I suspect, thought that Duncan, the former chief of the Chicago public schools, could use all he had learned there to raise achievement for students across the country.
It sounds great, but it was the same thought that led previous presidents to appoint those previous fine education secretaries to their posts. How much good did that do? Test scores for elementary and middle school students have come up a bit in the last couple of decades, but not enough to get excited about. High school scores are still flat. If national education policy had made a big jump forward, I would say we should continue to fill this job, but that hasn’t happened either. I think the No Child Left Behind law, supported by both parties, was an improvement over previous federal policies, but it was only copying what several states had already done to make schools accountable and identify schools that needed extra help.
Duncan will never admit this, but I am betting that soon he will realize, if he hasn’t already, that he had the potential to do much more for students when he was running the Chicago schools. He was able to make vital decisions like appointing principals, rather than push papers and give speeches in his new Washington gig.
I agree.
Duncan appears in Madison today with President Obama.
No Child Left Behind: New evidence that charter schools help even kids in other schools.
Opponents of school choice are running out of excuses as evidence continues to roll in about the positive impact of charter schools.
Stanford economist Caroline Hoxby recently found that poor urban children who attend a charter school from kindergarten through 8th grade can close the learning gap with affluent suburban kids by 86% in reading and 66% in math. And now Marcus Winters, who follows education for the Manhattan Institute, has released a paper showing that even students who don’t attend a charter school benefit academically when their public school is exposed to charter competition.
Mr. Winters focuses on New York City public school students in grades 3 through 8. “For every one percent of a public school’s students who leave for a charter,” concludes Mr. Winters, “reading proficiency among those who remain increases by about 0.02 standard deviations, a small but not insignificant number, in view of the widely held suspicion that the impact on local public schools . . . would be negative.” It tuns out that traditional public schools respond to competition in a way that benefits their students.
Advocating Indiana Teacher Licensing Reform
Bennett says instead of assuming people will pick teaching careers and stay for life, schools could consider front-loading pay for beginning teachers to lure more people in, while also instituting closer evaluations for those rookie teachers to make sure they’re qualified.
The Professional Standards Board is scheduled to discuss Bennett’s call to license teachers based on non-school experience at its November 18 meeting. Bennett says he expects the board to make some changes to the details of the plan, but says he hopes for final approval before year’s end.
Hillsborough Schools stand on the verge of massive, Gates-funded reforms to boost teaching
Hillsborough County Public Schools will soon embark on a seven year, $202 million journey to find out. The district would join a national effort to improve teacher effectiveness, the one factor experts say makes the biggest difference in a student’s success or failure.
Officials worry about cost overruns, dissension from teachers and their union, and other glitches which have doomed similar efforts across the nation. But success would create a generation of great teachers, and bolster the district’s reputation as a laboratory for educational reform./em>
Duncan’s reform hinges on an ancient theory
Teachers, historically, have had to fight for respect in a society that placed a lower premium on teaching. From its origins, teaching has been held as a lowly position held by unskilled clergy and masters (mostly men) who, as long as they could recite the Bible, were equipped. Those that couldn’t do, taught. As a matter of fact, not too long ago, before unions fought for higher pay, teaching was the one of the lowest paid professions.
Currently, in Connecticut, along with other states across the country, we have raised the bar, and set the highest standards for our teachers. Susan Engel suggests otherwise. In an article in the New York Times entitled “Teach Your Teachers Well” (11/01/09), she agrees with Secretary of Education Arne Duncan’s reform that in order to have good schools “we need great teachers.” Engel goes onto say that “once we have a better pool of graduate students, we need to train them differently than we did in the past.” Engels calls for a more rigorous teacher preparation program with a 3.5 GPA minimum requirement and an “intensive application process.”
The implication is that our failing schools are due to dumb teachers teaching the students. As she states: “weaker students are in the less intellectually rigorous programs and the ones training to become teachers.”
Before the 19th century, teachers didn’t require a license to teach. Today, we have increased standards, dramatically, yet, oddly enough, our students are failing to make the grade. It’s hard to believe that we were better off just teaching the Bible.
School Boards Unhappy with Wisconsin Test Score Teacher Evaluation Bill, Teacher Union supports it
Wisconsin schools could use student test scores to evaluate teachers, but they still couldn’t use the information to discipline or fire them under a bill moving quickly through the Legislature.
Lawmakers must remove a ban on using test scores in evaluations for Wisconsin to compete for about $4.5 billion in Race to the Top stimulus money for education. Race to the Top is intended to improve student achievement, boost the performance of minority students and raise graduation rates.
Republicans and the Wisconsin Association of School Boards say Doyle and Democrats who control the Legislature are still giving teachers too much deference even as they work to qualify the state for the program.
Wisconsin and Nevada are the only states that don’t allow test results to be used to evaluate teachers. A similar prohibition in New York expires next year, and California removed its ban earlier this year to compete for the federal stimulus money.
Doyle and Democratic lawmakers are moving quickly to get Wisconsin’s ban removed with a vote this week. There is urgency because applications for the Race to the Top money will likely be due in a couple of months and the Legislature ends its session for the year on Thursday.
Doyle supports a proposal that would lift Wisconsin’s restriction on tying test scores with teacher evaluations. However, it would keep in place a ban on using the scores to fire, suspend or discipline a teacher.
Teach Your Teachers Well
Susan Engel, via a kind Barb Williams email:
ARNE DUNCAN, the secretary of education, recently called for sweeping changes to the way we select and train teachers. He’s right. If we really want good schools, we need to create a critical mass of great teachers. And if we want smart, passionate people to become these great educators, we have to attract them with excellent programs and train them properly in the substance and practice of teaching.
Our best universities have, paradoxically, typically looked down their noses at education, as if it were intellectually inferior. The result is that the strongest students are often in colleges that have no interest in education, while the most inspiring professors aren’t working with students who want to teach. This means that comparatively weaker students in less intellectually rigorous programs are the ones preparing to become teachers.
So the first step is to get the best colleges to throw themselves into the fray. If education was a good enough topic for Plato, John Dewey and William James, it should be good enough for 21st-century college professors.
These new teacher programs should be selective, requiring a 3.5 undergraduate grade point average and an intensive application process. But they should also be free of charge, and admission should include a stipend for the first three years of teaching in a public school.
Once we have a better pool of graduate students, we need to train them differently from how we have in the past. Too often, teaching students spend their time studying specific instructional programs and learning how to handle mechanics like making lesson plans. These skills, while useful, are not what will transform a promising student into a good teacher.
Barb Williams is a teacher at Madison’s Hamilton Middle School.
Ex-Portland Superintendent Vicki Phillips: It’s all about the teacher
Former Portland Superintendent Vicki Phillips, now director of education for the Gates Foundation, didn’t break any news in her speech to big city school board members and superintendents in Portland last week.
Instead, she reinterated what she and others already have said about Gates’ version 2.0 of fixing American high schools: Essentially, it’s all about the teacher.
The Gates Foundation first tried to improve students’ readiness for college and decrease the dropout rate by getting high schools to morph into smaller, more personalized academies. It poured hundreds of millions of dollars into the effort, but ultimately, it didn’t work.
Gates and Phillips now openly admit: School structure is not the key. (Parents and educators in Portland Public School make use that same line about Phillips’ main, and unfinished, initiative while in PPS: creating K-8 schools in place of middle schools.)
So, the foundation now plans to pour at least half a billion dollars into a teacher quality initiative.
It will sponsor rigorous research to help determine which qualities or skills that a teacher exhibits translate into the greatest gains in student learning, so that school districts can identify, recruit and retain the best performers. And it will award millions to several pioneering urban districts that agree to hire, place, train and pay teachers differently, with much more weight given to helping ensure that students get highly effective teachers, particularly students in greatest academic need.
Education reform long troubled in Washington, DC
When Kathy Patterson learned about Thursday’s D.C. Council hearing, during which Chairman Vincent C. Gray and Schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee pelted each other with accusations of law-breaking and secret meetings, she had one immediate reaction.
“Here we go again,” said Patterson, a former council member and chairwoman of its education committee. It looked as if another attempt at public school reform was disintegrating in a hail of recriminations and rhetoric, with Rhee destined to join Franklin L. Smith, Lt. Gen. Julius Becton, Arlene Ackerman, Paul L. Vance and Clifford B. Janey, the school leaders who preceded her in the past two decades.
It was supposed to be different this time. The 2007 legislation that disbanded the old D.C. Board of Education and gave control of the school system to Mayor Adrian M. Fenty (D) was designed to minimize the push-and-pull of ward politics, making a single executive accountable. But Thursday’s hearing vividly illustrated that no legislation can completely account for the mix of personalities who come together to execute it.
Learning Curve: A troubling score gap
In a new report contrasting proficiency scores on state exams to federal tests, Georgia comes across as a very easy grader.
“States are setting the bar too low,” said U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan in response to the release Thursday of the study “Mapping State Proficiency Standards onto NAEP Scales: 2005-2007.”
The federal study compares proficiency standards of states using the results of the National Assessment of Education Progress — often called the Nation’s Report Card — as the common yardstick.
A national test given to select students in every state, NAEP is the only nationally representative and continuing assessment of what America’s students know and can do in various subject areas.
Because students across the nation take the same NAEP assessment, state-to-state comparisons can be made.
Wis. teachers couldn’t be fired over test scores
Wisconsin schools could use student test scores to evaluate teachers, but they still couldn’t use the information to discipline or fire them under a bill moving quickly through the Legislature.
Lawmakers must remove a ban on using test scores in evaluations for Wisconsin to compete for about $4.5 billion in Race to the Top stimulus money for education. Race to the Top is intended to improve student achievement, boost the performance of minority students and raise graduation rates.
Republicans and the Wisconsin Association of School Boards say Doyle and Democrats who control the Legislature are still giving teachers too much deference even as they work to qualify the state for the program.
Wisconsin and Nevada are the only states that don’t allow test results to be used to evaluate teachers. A similar prohibition in New York expires next year, and California removed its ban earlier this year to compete for the federal stimulus money.
Doyle and Democratic lawmakers are moving quickly to get Wisconsin’s ban removed with a vote this week. There is urgency because applications for the Race to the Top money will likely be due in a couple of months and the Legislature ends its session for the year on Thursday.
Doyle supports a proposal that would lift Wisconsin’s restriction on tying test scores with teacher evaluations. However, it would keep in place a ban on using the scores to fire, suspend or discipline a teacher.
NCES High School Longitudinal Study 2009
National Center for Educational Statistics:
The High School Longitudinal Study of 2009 (HSLS:09) is a nationally representative, longitudinal study of more than 23,000 9th graders in 944 schools who will be followed through their secondary and postsecondary years. The study focuses on understanding students’ trajectories from the beginning of high school into postsecondary education or the workforce and beyond. What students decide to pursue when, why, and how are crucial questions for HSLS:09, especially, but not solely, in regards to science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) courses, majors, and careers. This study features a new student assessment in algebraic skills, reasoning, and problem solving and includes, like past studies, surveys of students, their parents, math and science teachers, school administrators, as well as a new survey of school counselors. The first wave of data collection for HSLS:09 begins in the fall of 2009 and will produce not only a nationally representative dataset but also state representative datasets for each of ten states.
The study’s basic facts are here.
Student achievement standards higher in South Carolina than other states
According to a new national report, South Carolina student achievement standards are among the highest in the nation.
The report said many states declare students to have achieved grade-level mastery of reading and math when the children have not, according to the National Center for Education Statistics, a division of the U.S. Department of Education. [Complete Report 3MB PDF.]
The agency compared state achievement standards to the standards behind the federally funded National Assessment of Educational Progress.
The report, which was released Thursday, said many states deemed children to be proficient or on grade level based on state standards when those students would rate “below basic,” meaning lacking even partial mastery, in reading and math under the NAEP standards.
State standards vary significantly from state to state, according to the report. But South Carolina standards measured among the highest.
In 15 states the standards a student had to meet to score proficient on state reading tests for eighth-graders were not as high as the standards to score basic on NAEP, according to the report. But South Carolina standards for eighth-grade reading were the highest in the nation.
N.Y. Harbor School Seeks Sea Change In Education
Murray Fisher had a dream: Take the 600 miles of New York City’s coastline and all the water surrounding it, and start a maritime high school that would teach inner-city kids about their watery world — everything from boat building and ocean ecology to oyster growing.
Next year, the Urban Assembly New York Harbor School will open its doors on Governors Island, a tree-covered jewel sold to the Dutch for two axes and a necklace, 800 yards off the coast of Manhattan. But for now, the Harbor School is in Bushwick, in the heart of Brooklyn.
Urban Environment Meets Natural World
At the Harbor School, each student wears a T-shirt emblazoned with the school’s name. Tanks burble with classroom-grown fish.
Brendan Malone teaches maritime technology — his classroom is big enough to build wooden boats in.
Grade the Teachers: A way to improve schools, one instructor at a time
A good teacher equals a good school year. Not always, but far more often than not. Ask any parents of an elementary-grade child how the school year is going, and it won’t be long before you’ll hear them rave about – or bemoan – the teacher their child has been assigned to. There are teachers who are duds, who can find a way to drain the fun out of a unit on dinosaurs for second-graders. And there those with a gift for reaching the eighth-grader slouched in the back of the classroom with a penchant for eye rolling. These teachers can bring to life to Poe’s fascination with the dead, or deliver just the right contemporary analogy to make sense of the War of 1812.
Nearly everyone can probably recall a teacher who lit their passion for poetry or who was able to help them connect all the dots in a seemingly incomprehensible algebra formula. We know that individual teachers can make a huge difference.
But public schools in America have been bent on ignoring the obvious: Almost nothing about the way we hire, evaluate, pay, or assign teachers to classrooms is designed to operate with that goal in mind. Most teachers receive only cursory performance evaluations, with virtually every teacher graded highly. We use a one-size-for-all salary structure, in which the only factors used in raises are teachers’ higher-education credentials and number of years in the system, neither of which is strongly linked to their effectiveness. And we often let seniority, rather than merit, drive decisions about where a teacher is placed. It is in many ways an industrial model that treats teachers as identical, interchangeable parts, when we know that they are not.
Education rights for American Indian children need protecting
Robert Cook gave people at a multicultural education convention in Denver a patriotic history lesson that was different from any that most people had heard before.
Cook, president of the Oglala Lakota Indian Education Association, said Saturday that Article I Section 8 and Article VI of the U.S. Constitution ensure rights through treaties for American Indians. That includes the right for American Indian children to receive a good education that will prepare them for college and good careers.
Sadly, however, American Indian schools, with an average age of 60 years, are in horrible condition, and the dropout rate of Native people is disproportionately high.
“Our schools are literally falling apart,” Cook told the 19th Annual International Conference of the National Association for Multicultural Education, which ends today. “They don’t serve the needs of our students.”
Notes and Links: President Obama and Education Secretary Arne Duncan Visit Madison’s Wright Middle School (one of two Charter Schools in Madison).
Background
President Barack Obama and Education Secretary Arne Duncan will visit Madison’s Wright Middle School Wednesday, November 4, 2009, purportedly to give an education speech. The visit may also be related to the 2010 Wisconsin Governor’s race. The Democrat party currently (as of 11/1/2009) has no major announced candidate. Wednesday’s event may include a formal candidacy announcement by Milwaukee Mayor, and former gubernatorial candidate Tom Barrett. UPDATE: Alexander Russo writes that the visit is indeed about Barrett and possible legislation to give the Milwaukee Mayor control of the schools.
Possible Participants:
Wright Principal Nancy Evans will surely attend. Former Principal Ed Holmes may attend as well. Holmes, currently Principal at West High has presided over a number of controversial iniatives, including the “Small Learning Community” implementation and several curriculum reduction initiatives (more here).
I’m certain that a number of local politicians will not miss the opportunity to be seen with the President. Retiring Democrat Governor Jim Doyle, Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction Superintendent Tony Evers, Dane County Executive Kathleen Falk (Falk has run for Governor and Attorney General in the past) and Madison School Superintendent Dan Nerad are likely to be part of the event. Senator Russ Feingold’s seat is on the fall, 2010 ballot so I would not be surprised to see him at Wright Middle School as well.
Madison’s Charter Intransigence
Madison, still, has only two charter schools for its 24,295 students: Wright and Nuestro Mundo.
Wright resulted from the “Madison Middle School 2000” initiative. The District website has some background on Wright’s beginnings, but, as if on queue with respect to Charter schools, most of the links are broken (for comparison, here is a link to Houston’s Charter School Page). Local biotech behemoth Promega offered free land for Madison Middle School 2000 [PDF version of the District’s Promega Partnership webpage]. Unfortunately, this was turned down by the District, which built the current South Side Madison facility several years ago (some School Board members argued that the District needed to fulfill a community promise to build a school in the present location). Promega’s kind offer was taken up by Eagle School. [2001 Draft Wright Charter 60K PDF]
Wright & Neustro Mundo Background
Wright Middle School Searches:
Bing / Clusty / Google / Google News / Yahoo
Madison Middle School 2000 Searches:
Bing / Clusty / Google / Google News / Yahoo
“Nuestro Mundo, Inc. is a non-profit organization that was established in response to the commitment of its founders to provide educational, cultural and social opportunities for Madison’s ever-expanding Latino community.” The dual immersion school lives because the community and several School Board members overcame District Administration opposition. Former Madison School Board member Ruth Robarts commented in 2005:
The Madison Board of Education rarely rejects the recommendations of Superintendent Rainwater. I recall only two times that we have explicitly rejected his views. One was the vote to authorize Nuestro Mundo Community School as a charter school. The other was when we gave the go-ahead for a new Wexford Ridge Community Center on the campus of Memorial High School.
Here’s how things happen when the superintendent opposes the Board’s proposed action.Nuestro Mundo:
Bing / Clusty / Google / Google News / Yahoo
The local school District Administration (and Teacher’s Union) intransigence on charter schools is illustrated by the death of two recent community charter initiatives: The Studio School and a proposed Nuestro Mundo Middle School.
About the Madison Public Schools
Those interested in a quick look at the state of Madison’s public schools should review Superintendent Dan Nerad’s proposed District performance measures. This document presents a wide variety of metrics on the District’s current performance, from advanced course “participation” to the percentage of students earning a “C” in all courses and suspension rates, among others.
Education Hot Topics
Finally, I hope President Obama mentions a number of Education Secretary Arne Duncan’s recent hot topics, including:
- Lift caps on charter schools.
- End mediocre School of Education teacher training [The University of Wisconsin School of Education Grade Distribution Reports can be found here.]
- Trace test scores to Education Schools
This wonderful opportunity for Wright’s students will, perhaps be most interesting for the ramifications it may have on the adults in attendance. Ripon Superintendent Richard Zimman recent Rotary speech alluded to school district’s conflicting emphasis on “adult employment” vs education.
Wisconsin State Test Score Comparisons: Madison Middle Schools:
WKCE Madison Middle School Comparison: Wright / Cherokee / Hamilton / Jefferson / O’Keefe / Sennett / Sherman / Spring Harbor / Whitehorse
About Madison:
- City of Madison Demographics
- Madison Police Calls – reported by the MPD
Wisconsin teachers couldn’t be fired over test scores.- Should the President and his entourage have time for a meal, I recommend Himal Chuli, Campus Biryani or Curry in the Box
- Local Media Sites
UPDATE: How Do Students at Wright Compare to Their Peers at Other MMSD Middle Schools?
Racial Achievement Gap Still Plagues Schools
Nancy Solomon via a kind reader’s email:
American schools have struggled for decades to close what’s called the ‘minority achievement gap’ — the lower average test scores, grades and college attendance rates among black and Latino students.
Typically, schools place children who are falling behind in remedial classes, to help them catch up. But some schools are finding that grouping students by ability, also known as tracking or leveling, causes more problems than it solves.
Columbia High School in Maplewood, N.J., is a well-funded school that is roughly 60 percent black and 40 percent white. The kids mix easily and are friendly with one another. But when the bell rings, students go their separate ways.
Teacher Noel Cooperberg’s repeat algebra class last year consisted of all minority kids who had flunked the previous year. There were only about a dozen students because the school keeps lower-level classes small to try to boost success. But a group of girls sitting in the middle never so much as picked up a pencil, and they often disrupted the class. It was a different scene from Cooperberg’s honors-level pre-calculus class, which had three times as many students — most of them white.
These two classes are pretty typical for the school. Lower-level classes — called levels two and three — are overwhelmingly black, while higher-level four and five are mostly white. Students are assigned to these levels by a combination of grades, test scores and teacher recommendations.
Madison School District Administration Response to the Math Task Force
The local school district’s increasing use of reform math programs lead to the creation of a “Math Task Force“. The District Administration’s response is outlined in this 2.6MB PDF document:
The purpose of this report is to describe the recomrnendations in response to the Madison Metropolitan School District Mathematics Task Force Report: Review of Mathematics Curriculum and Related Issues, submitted to the Board of Education June, 2008.
Administrative Recommendations Summary The materials included in this packet update and replace those distributed to the Board of Education in April 2009. Included in the materials is a proposed budget.
Middle School Mathematics Specialists (see Recommendations 1-5)
The Superintendent and UW-Madison Deans of Letters and Sciences and the School of Education commissioned a representative and collaborative group to design a professional development plan for this initiative. The group was convened in June and has since met four times during the summer to research and design a professional development plan to support middle school mathematics teachers.
The Middle School Math Partnership committee has tentatively planned five courses for the professional development proposal. Those courses are Number and Generalization, Rational Number and Proportional Reasoning, Geometry, Measurement and Trigonometry, and Algebra and Functions. The courses would be spread out over two years and be co-facilitated by UW and MMSD staff.
Research, data gathering and design will continue through 2009-2010 with the initial cohort of middle school teachers beginning in summer 2010. Upon completion of an initial draft, the plan will be presented to district teachers for further input and refinement.
In collaboration with the above group, a National Science Foundation Targeted Partnership proposal, Professional Learning Partnership K-20 (PLP K-20), was submitted on August 20, 2009. A UW-Madison and MMSD team of nearly 30 members worked during the summer to craft a proposal focused on systemic and sustainable mathematics professional development. The vision described in the proposal creates “a lasting interface to coordinate material, human, social, and cyber resources” among the UW-Madison and District. The principal investigator of the NSF proposal is Eric Wilcots. Co-Pl’s include Provost Deluca, Superintendent Nerad, Dean Sandefur and Dean Underwood.
Background notes and links:
- Math Forum audio & video links.
- West High School Math Teacher letter to Isthmus.
- UW-Madison Math Faculty (35 signatures) open letter to the Madison School District about the Math Coordinator Position.
- Madison School District 8th Grade Math Data.
Again, it will be interesting to see what, if any substantive changes occur in the local math programs.
“Chicago Muscle” on Education Reform and the Democrat Party
Kennedy worked closely with President Bush on the flawed and deeply unpopular No Child Left Behind Act. Like a packaged-goods company with a tainted product, the Obama administration has left that name behind and now calls its program the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, LBJ’s original title in 1965. But the accountability-and-standards movement Kennedy and Bush launched is essential, and Obama has moved much faster than expected to advance it. He and Education Secretary Arne Duncan are showing some Chicago muscle and giving states a “choice” right out of The Untouchables: lift your caps on the number of innovative charter schools allowed and your prohibitions on holding teachers accountable for whether kids learn–or lose a chance for some of Obama’s $5 billion “Race to the Top” money. Massachusetts recently lifted its charter cap and nearly a dozen other states are scampering to comply. Now that’s hardball we can believe in.
This issue cleaves the Democratic Party. On one side are Obama and the reformers, who point out that we now have a good idea of what works: KIPP and other “no excuses” charter models boast 80 percent graduation rates in America’s roughest neighborhoods, nearly twice the norm. On the other side are the teachers’ unions and their incrementalist enablers in the political class. They talk a good game about education but make up phony excuses for opposing real reform and accountability.
New York Governor’s Charter Shock
In a surprise move, Gov. Paterson said yesterday he doesn’t plan to push for changes to state laws that experts have warned could jeopardize New York’s chances of raking in hundreds of millions of dollars in federal education aid.
Federal officials have highlighted two state laws in particular — one limiting the number of charter schools to 200 and another prohibiting the use of student test scores in determining whether a teacher deserves tenure — as potential barriers to the state’s bid for a share of the $4.3 billion competitive pot, known as Race to the Top.
While legislation was introduced last week to enhance New York’s standing by scrapping those laws, a spokeswoman for Paterson — who has supported charter schools in the past — said the governor would not be among its boosters.
“At this time, we believe New York state is eligible for Race to the Top funds and that legislative changes are currently not needed,” said the spokeswoman, Marissa Shorenstein.
College Competitiveness Reconsidered
Everybody knows that college is harder to get into today than ever before, right? That’s why students flock to test-prep courses, and spend countless hours trying to transform themselves into what they imagine admissions deans want.
Admissions deans have tried to play down the hype, and just last week the National Association for College Admission Counseling released data showing that the acceptance rate at four-year colleges has declined from 71.3 percent in 2001 to 66.8 percent in 2007 — hardly an impossible bar to get over. So why are so many people convinced that the story in higher education admissions is about increased competitiveness?
The problem — according to a major research project released Monday by a leading scholar of higher education — is that there are two trends at play.
A small number of colleges have become much more competitive over recent decades, according to Caroline M. Hoxby, an economist at Stanford University. But her study — published by the National Bureau of Economic Research — finds that as many as half of colleges have become substantially less competitive over time.
The key shift in college admissions isn’t increased competitiveness, Hoxby writes. Rather, both trends are explained by an increased willingness by students generally, and especially the best students, to attend colleges that aren’t near where they grew up. This shift increased the applicant pool for some colleges but cut it for others.
“Typical college-going students in the U.S. should be unconcerned about rising selectivity. If anything, they should be concerned about falling selectivity, the phenomenon they will actually experience,” Hoxby writes.
This paper shows that although the top ten percent of colleges are substantially more selective now than they were 5 decades ago, most colleges are not more selective. Moreover, at least 50 percent of colleges are substantially less selective now than they were then. This paper demonstrates that competition for space–the number of students who wish to attend college growing faster than the number of spaces available–does not explain changing selectivity. The explanation is, instead, that the elasticity of a student’s preference for a college with respect to its proximity to his home has fallen substantially over time and there has been a corresponding increase in the elasticity of his preference for a college with respect to its resources and peers. In other words, students used to attend a local college regardless of their abilities and its characteristics. Now, their choices are driven far less by distance and far more by a college’s resources and student body. It is the consequent re-sorting of students among colleges that has, at once, caused selectivity to rise in a small number of colleges while simultaneously causing it to fall in other colleges. I show that the integration of the market for college education has had profound implications on the peers whom college students experience, the resources invested in their education, the tuition they pay, and the subsidies they enjoy. An important finding is that, even though tuition has been rising rapidly at the most selective schools, the deal students get there has arguably improved greatly. The result is that the “stakes” associated with admission to these colleges are much higher now than in the past.
New Global Academy to offer specialized courses to students in eight Dane County school districts
The initial program in biomedicine would include courses in the principles of biomedical sciences; human body systems; medical interventions; and science research. The classes likely would be taught by high school teachers, but would incorporate business and academic experts to help teach, offer apprenticeships and career placement.
The academy’s location won’t be decided until leaders know how many students are interested in the program. However, one possibility is holding classes at MATC’s West campus in the former Famous Footwear building, Reis said.
Students – organizers hope about 150 – would travel from their respective high schools to Madison’s Far West Side every day for the courses, which would be part of the academy’s two-year programs. Depending on the interest in the biomedical class, three sections would be taught during the day and possibly one in the evening, Reis said.
Offering a night class would maximize the use of the facility and offer some flexibility to students who live farther outside of Madison, he said.
Verona, Middleton Cross-Plains, Belleville, McFarland, Mount Horeb, Oregon, Wisconsin Heights and Madison school districts have agreed to participate in the academy.
Madison School District Strategic Plan: Nirvana by 2014/2015?
The Madison School Board recently passed the District’s Strategic Plan. Superintendent Dan Nerad has now published a draft document outlining performance measures for the plan (this is positive). The 600K PDF document is well worth reading. Mr. Nerad’s proposed performance measures rely on the oft criticized – for its lack of rigor – state exam, the WKCE. The Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction recently stated that “Schools should not rely on only WKCE data to gauge progress of individual students or to determine effectiveness of programs or curriculum“.
A few highlights from the 600K PDF document:
- By 2014/2015 every Madison School District Student will be 100% proficient on the WKCE. “Flexible Instruction” is referenced for all students.
- The percentage of Madison School District high school students “participating in” advanced courses has declined over the past three years:
Grade 2006/2007 2007/2008 2008/2009 9 0.3% 0.4% 0.2% 10 5.5% 7.3% 1.9% 11 18.0% 18.1% 10.6% 12 34.1% 34.3% 24.3% Related: WKCE Scores Document Decline in the Percentage of Madison’s Advanced Students.
- The percentage of students scoring “C” or above for all courses will rise from 45 to 64% (6th to 12th grade; 2008/2009 school year) to all students (100%) in 2014-2015.
Related:
- Are MMSD Programs Effective, Who Knows?
When all third graders read at grade level or beyond by the end of the year, the achievement gap will be closed…and not before. - West High Math teachers on curriculum reduction.
Discussing these data is a step in the right direction. Unfortunately, use of the WKCE does not instill much confidence, from my perspective.
via “Some States Drop Testing Bar” by John Hechinger.
Happy Halloween!
Federal Researchers Find Lower Standards in Schools
A new federal study shows that nearly a third of the states lowered their academic proficiency standards in recent years, a step that helps schools stay ahead of sanctions under the No Child Left Behind law. But lowering standards also confuses parents about how children’s achievement compares with those in other states and countries.
The study, released Thursday, was the first by the federal Department of Education’s research arm to use a statistical comparison between federal and state tests to analyze whether states had changed their testing standards.
It found that 15 states lowered their proficiency standards in fourth- or eighth-grade reading or math from 2005 to 2007. Three states, Maine, Oklahoma and Wyoming, lowered standards in both subjects at both grade levels, the study said.
Eight states increased the rigor of their standards in one or both subjects and grades. Some states raised standards in one subject but lowered them in another, including New York, which raised the rigor of its fourth-grade-math standard but lowered the standard in eighth-grade reading, the study said.
Wisconsin’s standards fell below the Federal “Basic Achievement Level”. Channel3000 has more.
The Best Writing in Educational Technology
The single best piece of writing in recent memory on the large scale structural forces shaping higher education and the role of technology in impacting these forces is the first chapter of The Tower and the Cloud, “The Gathering Cloud: Is This the End of the Middle?”
You can read Katz’s chapter here, or better yet go and get the whole volume. I’m focussing on Katz’s introductory chapter, but the whole book contains a series of wonderful essays that flush out the ideas raised by Katz in his chapter and are worth the investment to read.
Rarely does a piece of writing stick with me like Katz’s chapter has, one-year on from when I first picked up the Tower and the Cloud at last year’s EDUCAUSE conference. We live in such a fast world of micro information, tweets, disposable blog posts, quick YouTube videos, online presentations, and RSS feeds. We ed. tech. people like the new new, we like innovation, we are suspicious of the status quo and firmly believe that if technology has changed everything else it should (and can) change the academy as well.
Katz’s writing is an important antidote to the “right now” nature of much of our information consumption, communication and work in learning technology. He takes the time to tell the long story of the development and growth of higher education, and then situates the disruptive innovations slamming into our institutions as part of this larger story.
President Obama’s November 4, 2009 Madison Destination: Wright Middle School?
President Obama’s “education” speech, due to be delivered in Madison on Wednesday, November 4, 2009 may, perhaps be given at Wright Middle School. It is a (rare) charter school located in Madison. Obama and Education Secretary (and former Chicago Superintendent) have been promoting structural change within our public schools. Wright, a Charter School, was birthed via a “Madison Middle School 2000” initiative along with the desire to place a new middle school on Madison’s south side. Local biotech behemoth Promega offered land for the school in Fitchburg, which the District turned down (that land and initiative became Eagle School).
Has Wright been successful? Has it achieved the goals illuminated in the original Madison Middle School 2000 initiative?
There are any number of local issues that could be discussed around the visit, including: the District’s general opposition to charter schools, changes to the teacher contract seniority system and Wisconsin’s controversial and weak state test system (WKCE).
The Wisconsin State Journal has more.
It will be interesting to see what, if any, substantive actions arise from Obama’s visit.
Public-school education Desert excellence: “horrified by the mediocrity and low expectations at American public schools”
AND what was the Minotaur? The ten-year-olds scribble their answer onto tiny whiteboards and hold them up for the teacher to see. Once each has got a nod, they repeat together: “half-man, half-bull.”
By the time these fifth-graders at the BASIS school in Scottsdale, Arizona, reach 8th grade they will have the option of taking Advanced Placement (AP) exams, standardised nationally to test high-school students at college level. By the 9th grade, they must do so. As a result, says Michael Block, the school’s co-founder, our students are “two years ahead of Arizona and California schools and one year ahead of the east coast.”
But that, he emphasises, is not the yardstick he and his wife Olga use. Instead, their two BASIS schools, one in Tucson and this one in suburban Phoenix, explicitly compete with the best schools in the world–South Korea’s in maths, say, or Finland’s in classics.
They had the idea after Olga Block came to Arizona from her native Czech Republic, looked for a school for her daughter and was horrified by the mediocrity and low expectations at American public schools. So they decided to “establish a world-standard school in the desert,” says Mr Block. They started the Tucson campus in 1998 and added the Scottsdale one recently.
Our Local Schools Should Be Showcases Not Basket Cases – GOOG Ups Its Schools Focus
The promise of distance learning through the Internet has yet to be realized and I’m puzzled why this is the case since it should be possible to collaborate on creating a great online curriculum. Once it is created it can be easily accessed by anyone.
Why don’t we use the social networking and collaborative tools we already have to put together an open-sourced curriculum consisting of text, images, videos, lectures, online volunteers acting as tutors, etc. We have all the technology we need to do all of this today.
I’ve always been amazed that San Francisco/Silicon Valley region public schools are so bad. We are inventing the future here, yet we can’t use our ingenuity, our technologies to improve our local schools? Our public schools should be showcases, not basket cases, we should be ashamed to allow this to happen.
So it’s good to see Google becoming more interested in schools because there is a lot it could do to help, especially in terms of projects like its Google Books. Maybe it could help to provide text books. It’s incredible how expensive textbooks are.
For the past two days Google has hosted a conference on its campus: Breakthrough Learning in a Digital Age. The goal was to “create and act upon a breakthrough strategy for scaling up effective models of teaching and learning for children.” It’s not clear what breakthrough strategy has emerged but at least it’s a start,
New Jersey Governor candidates differ on urban education solutions
It’s an eternally vexing problem in New Jersey: How do you give the children in the state’s largely poor cities as good an education as the kids in middle-class and affluent suburbs?
The three main candidates for governor in Tuesday’s election have different ideas highlighting their plans.
Democratic incumbent Jon Corzine says a major piece of the answer is expanding a program that seems to be working , state-funded preschools for low-income children.
Both his challengers, Republican Chris Christie and Independent Chris Daggett, want to give parents and students more ways out of bad schools, hoping that will pressure them to improve.
By most measures, New Jersey’s school system as a whole is good. On standardized tests that can be used to compare states, students regularly rank consistently at or near the top.
The system is also pricey: Public schools cost more than $16,000 per student in the 2006-07 school year , the last year for which federal data is available. That was the highest price tag in the country, though it also comes in a state where incomes and the cost of living are among the highest.
For all the money, there’s long been a gap between how well students do in the cities and in the suburbs.
West Virginia Charter School Debate Heats Up
Education reformers are intensifying their push to bring charter schools to West Virginia as parents, teachers and lawmakers ready themselves for another round of legislative battles aimed at improving the state’s school system.
Charter schools advocates are stepping up their lobbying efforts by running advertisements and polling West Virginians on their thoughts about charters, which are private-style public schools. The state’s powerful teachers unions helped kill a charter school proposal earlier this year.
“We hope to change that conversation a bit,” said Tim McClung, a member of the group that calls itself West Virginians for Education Reform
To help do that, the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools started polling state residents Wednesday night to gauge their reaction to charter schools, McClung said.
Learning English
Fluency in English is part of the foundation necessary for a good quality of life in the United States. The school system must be set up so that students who are in an English language learning [ELL] programs are able to master the language and transition out of the program, as soon as possible, to join the rest of the student body to continue their studies.
An analysis by the Tomás Rivera Policy Institute, appropriately entitled “¿Qué Pasa? Are ELL Students Remaining in English Learning Classes Too Long?” points to delays in reclassifying as “fluent English proficient” students who began school as English language learners so that they can transition into regular academic programs. The detailed study shows that 30% of students who started First Grade as English language learners were still in the same classification eight years later. This situation puts students at greater risk of academic failure, as Ninth Grade is seen as critical for success in High School.
The problem is that students who are not reclassified by school authorities as fluent English proficient are at a disadvantage even when they get to the California High School exit exam.
Charter Schools ‘Market Share’ Growing; Exceeds 20% in 14 Communities
Public charter schools’
presence in K-12 schooling continues to grow, according to the latest Top 10 Charter Communities by Market Share report by the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools. In fact, charters now enroll more than one in five public school students in 14 communities – including major cities like Detroit, St. Louis, and Kansas City.
Demand remains strongest in urban areas – and as a result, charter “market share” is growing rapidly in cities and adjacent suburbs, even while the overall number of students remains a modest portion of nationwide enrollment.
“Charter schools are working at scale in a growing number of American cities,” according to Nelson Smith, President and CEO of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools. “Chartering is becoming well-established as a key component of the public education delivery system,” he added.
Many L.A. students not moving out of English language classes
Nearly 30% of Los Angeles Unified School District students placed in English language learning classes in early primary grades were still in the program when they started high school, increasing their chances of dropping out, according to a new study released Wednesday.
More than half of those students were born in the United States and three-quarters had been in the school district since first grade, according to the report by the Tomás Rivera Policy Institute at USC.
The findings raise questions about the teaching in the district’s English language classes, whether students are staying in the program too long and what more educators should do for students who start school unable to speak English fluently.
“If you start LAUSD at kindergarten and are still in ELL classes at ninth grade, that’s too long,” said Wendy Chavira, assistant director of the policy institute. “There is something wrong with the curriculum if there are still a very large number of students being stuck in the system.”
Rhode Island education chief seeks higher standards for prospective teachers
Education Commissioner Deborah A. Gist, who has made teacher quality the cornerstone of her three-month-old administration, is raising the score that aspiring teachers must achieve on a basic skills test required for admission to all of the state’s teacher training programs.
Currently, Rhode Island’s “cut score” ranks among the lowest in the nation, alongside Mississippi and Guam. Gist wants to raise it to the highest.
“Teacher quality is the single most important factor for student success in school,” Gist said. “This is a first step in raising our expectations across the board for our educators and our system.”
Gist says she intends to transform “the entire career span of a teacher,” including who is allowed to train to become a teacher, the rigor of the programs, mentoring of new teachers, support and training for veteran teachers, and the reward of higher pay for high performance.
“We need to look at how we improve at every point along the span,” Gist said. “Looking at teacher cut scores before they ever get accepted to a preparation program is a way to safeguard the early gate.”
Gist and her staff reviewed other states’ cut scores and found Virginia’s to be the highest in reading, math and writing. Gist set Rhode Island’s score one point higher than Virginia’s in each subject, saying she wants to make Rhode Island’s education system the envy of the nation.
“I have the utmost confidence that Rhode Island’s future teachers are capable of this kind of performance,” she said.
Perhaps one day we’ll have such actions in Wisconsin…
E. D. Hirsch’s Curriculum for Democracy
A content-rich pedagogy makes better citizens and smarter kids.
At his Senate confirmation hearing in February, Arne Duncan succinctly summarized the Obama administration’s approach to education reform: “We must build upon what works. We must stop doing what doesn’t work.” Since becoming education secretary, Duncan has launched a $4.3 billion federal “Race to the Top” initiative that encourages states to experiment with various accountability reforms. Yet he has ignored one state reform that has proven to work, as well as the education thinker whose ideas inspired it. The state is Massachusetts, and the education thinker is E. D. Hirsch, Jr.
The “Massachusetts miracle,” in which Bay State students’ soaring test scores broke records, was the direct consequence of the state legislature’s passage of the 1993 Education Reform Act, which established knowledge-based standards for all grades and a rigorous testing system linked to the new standards. And those standards, Massachusetts reformers have acknowledged, are Hirsch’s legacy. If the Obama administration truly wants to have a positive impact on American education, it should embrace Hirsch’s ideas and urge other states to do the same.
Hirsch draws his insights from well outside traditional education scholarship. He started out studying chemistry at Cornell University but, mesmerized by Nabokov’s lectures on Russian literature, switched his major to English. Hirsch did his graduate studies at Yale, one of the citadels in the 1950s of the New Criticism, which argued that the intent of an author, the reader’s subjective response, and the text’s historical background were largely irrelevant to a critical analysis of the text itself. But by the time Hirsch wrote his doctoral dissertation–on Wordsworth–he was already breaking with the New Critics. “I came to see that the text alone is not enough,” Hirsch said to me recently at his Charlottesville, Virginia, home. “The unspoken–that is, relevant background knowledge–is absolutely crucial in reading a text.” Hirsch’s big work of literary theory in his early academic career, Validity in Interpretation, reflected this shift in thinking. After publishing several more well-received scholarly books and articles, he received an endowed professorship and became chairman of the English department at the University of Virginia.
School board balks as Mayor Doyle controls search for superintendent
Mayor James Doyle has declared he’s in the city’s school superintendent search process, a move that is not sitting well with some School Committee members.
Doyle told members of the School Committee in an Oct. 15 letter, “I have decided to organize a search committee that will represent the entire community.
“The purpose of this search committee is to assist and advise the School Committee in the task of securing the best possible candidate to serve as Pawtucket’s next superintendent.”
Acting School Committee Chairman James Chellel told The Valley Breeze he planned to sit down with Doyle during the early part of this week as he tries to avoid a showdown over whether Doyle’s administration or the School Committee has the authority to set up a search committee.
“I want to show that we’re working together on this, but I do have reservations about the mayor taking this over,” said Chellel.
There’s no question that selecting a new superintendent falls under the purview of the School Committee, said Chellel, but the questions of who should set up the parameters of the search to find outgoing Superintendent Hans Dellith’s replacement are a little more fuzzy.
“I’ve asked our legal counsel for an opinion on it,” he said.
The Ever-Expanding U. of Phoenix
In the world of for-profit higher education, and higher education in general, the University of Phoenix has historically been viewed as the 800-pound gorilla.
As of Tuesday, it may be more like a 1,000-pound gorilla. As Phoenix’s parent company, the Apollo Group, reported its fourth quarter and annual earnings Tuesday, it announced that the university’s enrollment of degree-seeking students grew to 443,000 as of August 2009, up 22 percent from 362,000 in August 2008. The biggest growth in Phoenix’s enrollments, by far, came among students seeking associate degrees, which rose by 37 percent, to 201,200 from 146,500 in 2008.
About two-thirds of the university’s new students as of August are female, 27.7 percent are African-American, and about half are 30 or over.
The university attributed the sizable increases to a range of factors, including increased efforts in retaining students, expanded marketing, and the “current economic downturn, as working learners seek to advance their education to improve their job security or reemployment prospects.” Many community colleges and several of Phoenix’s major peers in for-profit career education, including Kaplan Higher Education (21.9 percent) and Corinthian Colleges, Inc. (24.4 percent), have reported sharp upturns in student enrollments this fall.
Number-Crushing: When Figures Get Personal
Everyone can agree that 1+1=2. But the idea that 7 is greater than 13 — that some numbers are luckier than others — makes no sense to some people. Such numerical biases can cause deep divisions.
And that is what happened earlier this month in Hong Kong. Property developer Henderson Land Development Co. made news for selling a condominium for $56.6 million, a price the developer called a residential record in Asia. But after that sale was announced, the property began making news for other unusual numbers. Henderson is labeling the floors of its property at 39 Conduit Road with numbers that increase, but not in the conventional 1-then-2 way. The floor above 39, for example, is 60. And the top three floors are consecutively labeled 66, 68 and 88.
This offended some people’s sense of order. At a protest Sunday against high housing prices, Hong Kong Democratic Party legislators expressed dissatisfaction with the numbering scheme’s tenuous relationship to reality. “You could call the ground floor the 88th floor, but it’s meaningless,” says Emily Lau. “When you say you live on the 88th floor, people expect you to be on the 88th floor, not the 10th floor or something.”
Illinois Prosecutors Turn Tables on Student Journalists
For more than a decade, classes of students at Northwestern University’s journalism school have been scrutinizing the work of prosecutors and the police. The investigations into old crimes, as part of the Medill Innocence Project, have helped lead to the release of 11 inmates, the project’s director says, and an Illinois governor once cited those wrongful convictions as he announced he was commuting the sentences of everyone on death row.
But as the Medill Innocence Project is raising concerns about another case, that of a man convicted in a murder 31 years ago, a hearing has been scheduled next month in Cook County Circuit Court on an unusual request: Local prosecutors have subpoenaed the grades, grading criteria, class syllabus, expense reports and e-mail messages of the journalism students themselves.
The prosecutors, it seems, wish to scrutinize the methods of the students this time. The university is fighting the subpoenas.
Debating the Merits of Leaving High School Early to Go to College
What should you do if you’re a high school junior who feels that spending one more year in high school would be a waste of time?
A thread on College Confidential raises that question, and has generated a lot of interesting responses. Here’s an excerpt from the original post:I am a junior in high school and because I seem like I am more mature and academically way ahead of my peers (especially in the math and sciences) at the moment, am considering an early leave from high school. But the thing is, I cannot get a graduation degree unless I complete four years of high school. Nevertheless, my desire for early admission into college has never ceased because (a) I know what I want to study and roughly what I want to do in life and (b) I feel like my senior year in high school will be somewhat a waste of my time since I would have practically exhausted all the resources available to me.
In a later post, the student adds: “Every day at school I cannot help but realize that I need so much more than just the classes and activities I have available to me at the moment. I don’t know if I could stand senior year.”
Paul Solman Answers Students’ Economic Questions
Economics correspondent Paul Solman takes his Business Desk blog inside classrooms across the United States to respond to high school students’ most pressing questions about Wall Street, the recession and unemployment.
Question: How does it happen that the whole world is in a recession? –Kavion, senior, Central High School, Phoenix, Ariz.
Paul Solman: The whole world isn’t in a recession. China is growing; so is India; so is Brazil. Among them, those three countries alone have something like two-thirds our GDP and maybe nine times as many people as we do.
As to the parts of the world that are in recession — largely in Europe — it looks like the reason is because their citizens borrowed and spent “beyond their means.”
Candidates for Charlottesville School Board
Ned Michie, Leah Puryear & Juandiego Wade:
According to the Virginia Department of Education, the drop-out rate for Charlottesville high school students is 13 percent.
How would you address this question? What measures would you recommend, specifically, to lower the rate?
As of last year, the state is calculating the dropout rate in a new, more accurate manner than in prior years, tracking individual students starting in ninth grade. Obviously the factors leading to a student’s high school success or failure start much earlier than ninth grade; therefore it is impossible to defeat the dropout problem even over several years of making all the right moves educationally. Moreover, because the educational needs of all children start at birth, every positive educational change will ultimately increase his or her chances of remaining in school.
Ned Michie
As a public school division, we take all comers regardless of aptitude, educational background, grade level, or other circumstance. While every school division has a set of challenges, Charlottesville’s student population presents a particularly unusual array of educational challenges for a small division.
On the one hand, we have a large number of children who will go on to the finest universities and become doctors, lawyers, scientists, entrepreneurs, and captains of industry. We ensure that these students stay challenged by providing an excellent gifted education program, honors classes, and about 20 AP and dual enrollment courses. On the other end of the spectrum, we have many children with great educational needs. For example, about 10 percent of our students use English as a second language (with about 50 different native languages). Half were refugees arriving with little or no knowledge of English; many had no education even in their own countries. Charlottesville also has a large number of group homes and, sadly, still has a significant population of economically disadvantaged families whose children are statistically at risk educationally.
Editorial: School reform the Gates way
Memphis City Schools administrators haven’t spent the money, but they’re counting on nearly $100 million from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to improve the effectiveness of the district’s teachers.
In fact, the district is investing $720,000 for a consultant to help make MCS Gates grant-ready.
U.S. Sen. Bill Frist may also tap the wealth of the Microsoft founder to help put together a statewide reform plan for Tennessee that would address teaching and school governance issues.
Not just at the district and state level, however, is the influence of America’s richest education reformer being felt.
The reform-minded Education Secretary Arne Duncan, who’s preparing to hand out $4.3 billion in stimulus money for public education improvement projects across the country, has two former Gates employees among his inner circle.
In Google we trust? Think again
ow much of your personal information is Google willing to turn over to a third party without a fight? We’ve asked a California federal court to unseal a report that would give customers of the world’s largest Internet company an answer to that question.
Google handed the report in question over to a judge in September to comply with a restraining order requested by Rocky Mountain Bank. The bank requested the order after it mistakenly sent the bank records for more than 1,000 customers to the wrong Gmail account. In the order granted by the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California in San Francisco, Google was told to deactivate the Gmail account and to provide contact information about the user of the Gmail account and whether he or she had read the e-mail. Google and the Gmail account holder also were told they couldn’t read the email, download the records or forward them to anyone.
A Gmail user who did nothing wrong had his or her account shut down because of the bank’s monumental screw up. And Google, a company that basically prints its own cash, didn’t lift a finger to protect the rights of one of its users. I love my Gmail account but this is a good reminder that there is NO privacy with any e-mail provider when push comes to shove. Public Citizen is representing Media Post Communications in this case. One of their reporters, Wendy Davis, has written extensively about the bank’s bungled email and Google’s lack of intestinal fortitude:
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
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.
Indian education system: Crying out for speedy reforms
At a recent India-China book launch, where human resource development minister Kapil Sibal was present, I made it a point to highlight the comparative picture between India and China in the education sector. This is a crucial sector for emerging economies attempting to achieve inclusive and rapid growth. Moreover, as several recent studies have brought out, returns on skill formation and higher education, which are already substantial, continue to rise as the world increasingly takes on the attributes of a knowledge economy. By the way, the book by Mohan Guruswamy and Zorawar Daulet Singh titled Chasing the Dragon is well worth a read for all those interested in finding out the distance we have to cover to catch up with China.
India’s adult literacy is 61 per cent compared with China’s 91 per cent. Expenditure on education as a percentage of total public expenditure is 10.7 per cent and 12.8 per cent, respectively. China has 708 researchers per million population compared with 19 in India. In 1990, publications by Indians in journals were 50 per cent higher but in 2008, Chinese publications outnumbered Indian ones by two to one. In 1985, the number of PhDs in science and engineering in India were 4,007 and 125 in China, but by 2004, China had 14,858 PhDs, while we had increased the number to only 6,318. In 2007, Indians filed 35,000 patents compared with 245,161 in China.
Major changes at 2 troubled D.C. schools
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.