Governance/Board Decision Making – Page 64

Pay bump for teachers with master’s degrees could be put to better use

The Center on Reinventing Public Education via a Debra Britt email:

Seattle, WA, July 20, 2009 — In this recessionary climate of depressed revenues and budget cuts for education, school districts across the U.S. “would be foolhardy” not to rethink paying teachers for master’s degrees, according to a new report out today.
“On average, master’s degrees in education bear no relation to student achievement,” say education researchers Marguerite Roza and Raegen Miller in their short paper, Separation of Degrees: State-By-State Analysis of Teacher Compensation for Master’s Degrees.
The brief was produced jointly by the Center on Reinventing Public Education and the Center for American Progress.
“During this time of fiscal stringency, it should raise eyebrows when a state automatically allocates such large sums of the average per-pupil expenditure in a manner that is not even suspected of promoting higher levels of student achievement,” say the authors.
In hard dollars, this means New York state spends an extra $416 per student (for a total of $1.121 billion a year) just because 78 percent of its teachers hold master’s degrees. In Washington state, the analogous numbers are $319 per pupil (or $330 million a year total) for the 56 percent of its teachers with a master’s. These expenditures, respectively, represent 2.78 percent and 3.30 percent of the total federal, state, and local money devoted to education in each state.
Roza and Miller chart these numbers for each state and suggest that the money now committed to the master’s bump in pay could be better spent, writing that: “Teaching candidates with salient and meaningful master’s degrees should be given preferential attention when competing for jobs, all else being equal. A master’s degree in engineering, for example, should be construed as evidence that a candidate possesses a deep understanding of a subject matter that is relevant to teaching mathematics or science.”

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My Full Set of Questions on the Strategic Plan

First, thank you Jim Z for posting the responses to our questions. I should note that we did not get answers to ALL of our questions. I am uploading the PDF that I sent with my questions in case you are interested in the full set. I apologize for the size of the document – I took the PDF, added notes and highlighting where I was requesting answers, and saved only the pages that were marked up. There are 25 pages in all.
Also, I found the following text while looking for something on the web in my day job. I liked the formulation, so am passing it along:

To meet the challenges of the twenty-first century, our students need not only knowledge, but also the skills to use that knowledge, the responsibilities associated with using it and practice in the integration of that knowledge in new and complex ways.

StratPlanCOMMENTS-Mathiak.pdf

How states like Illinois rig school tests to hype phony achievement

Wall Street Journal Editorial:

When President Obama chose Arne Duncan to lead the Education Department, he cited Mr. Duncan’s success as head of Chicago’s public school system from 2001 to 2008. But a new education study suggests that those academic gains aren’t what they seemed. The study also helps explain why big-city education reform is unlikely to occur without school choice.
Mr. Obama noted in December that “in just seven years, Arne’s boosted elementary test scores here in Chicago from 38% of students meeting the standard to 67%” and that “the dropout rate has gone down every year he’s been in charge.” But according to “Still Left Behind,” a report [158K PDF] by the Civic Committee of the Commercial Club of Chicago, a majority of Chicago public school students still drop out or fail to graduate with their class. Moreover, “recent dramatic gains in the reported number of CPS elementary students who meet standards on state assessments appear to be due to changes in the tests . . . rather than real improvements in student learning.”
Our point here isn’t to pick on Mr. Duncan, but to illuminate the ease with which tests can give the illusion of achievement. Under the 2001 No Child Left Behind law, states must test annually in grades 3 through 8 and achieve 100% proficiency by 2014. But the law gives states wide latitude to craft their own exams and to define math and reading proficiency. So state tests vary widely in rigor, and some have lowered passing scores and made other changes that give a false impression of academic success.
The new Chicago report explains that most of the improvement in elementary test scores came after the Illinois Standards Achievement Test was altered in 2006 to comply with NCLB. “State and local school officials knew that the new test and procedures made it easier for students throughout the state — and throughout Chicago — to obtain higher marks,” says the report.

Madison School District Budget Update: Wisconsin K-12 State Budget Changes

Superintendent Dan Nerad [184K PDF]:

Every two years the State of Wisconsin goes through a process to finalize a two year budget for all governmental programs. This biennial budget process is the source of the State’s commitment to public education here in Wisconsin, historically driven by legislative guidance to adhere to two-thirds funding.
The two-thirds funding has changed over recent years, but for the most part the State of Wisconsin was able to continue annual increases to public education in an attempt to keep up with rising costs within this sector.
The biennial budget was sigued into law near the end of June by Governor Jim Doyle after various proposals and with relatively few vetoes. This budget has numerous provisions that will effect the future of public education that include:

Repeal of the Qualified Economic Offer (QEO)
Decrease in funding for public education by the state of approximately $147 million
Decrease in the per pupil increase associated with revenue limits

Each of these provisions can and Will have a very unique impact on :MMSD over the years to come. The repeal of the QEO will potentially impact future settlements for salaries and benefits. The decrease in funding for public education by the state is projected to create the need for a tax increase conversation in order to sustain current programs. The decrease in the revenue limit formula will cause MMSD to face more reductions in programs and services fur the next two years at a minimum.
Many public and private organizations are dealing with this issue. It is perhaps a time to make lemonade out of lemons. In the MMSD’s case, getting out of the curriculum creation business (teaching & learning) and placing a renewed focus on hiring the most qualified teachers and letting them run.

Arne Duncan Public School System has biggest black-white achievement gap in USA

Edward Hayes:

A phony interpretation of Chicago Public Schools’ academic progress isn’t the only beast threatening your local schools. For decades now, in every school district with a fireplug, a Walgreens, and a crooked alderman, the test scores of white children have been higher than those of black youngsters. The monster is called the achievement GAP. It slithers into your school even when the black and white students are sitting right next to each other in the same classroom. Furthermore, black middle-class students cannot escape its wrath because the GAP tracks them down even when their parents escape to the suburbs or move uptown.
Boring but important: The stupidly named National Assessment for Education Progress (NAEP) exams, administered by the National Center for Education Statistics, the statistical arm of the U.S. Department of Education (whew!), reports that the national GAP has narrowed for 9 to 13 year olds in math and reading since 1978, but remains unchanged for the last ten years. But there are isolated pockets of small success where the gap narrowed a bit.
4th Grade Reading: Three states reduced the GAP (1990-2007) -Delaware, Florida, & New Jersey.

Are Obama and Duncan attacking teachers and local control?

Jesse ALred:

Since Franklin Roosevelt’s 1933 victory, working familes have been the heart of the Democratic Party. Except for African-Americans, Obama did not win the party’s heart in his primary contest with Hillary Clinton. He won with the support of affluent social liberals, well-educated youthful volunteers and superior financial support from the corporate sector.
The public schools’ policies of President Obama and his Secretary of Education Arne Duncan so far suggest this middle-class feeling that in spite of all his gifts Mr. Obama may lack the common touch or grounding in everyday reality may be right.
Secretary of Education Arne Duncan’s agenda seems designed to alienate middle-class teachers and parents who depend on public schools. His school reform proposals lack a well-grounded sense of why schools fail. His agenda includes the following:

Reading Strategies and Cargo Cult Science

Robert Pondiscio:

The idea that it’s enough to simply “find what works, adopt it, and spread it around,” notes scientist/blogger Allison over at Kitchen Table Math is an example of what physicist Richard Feynman called “Cargo Cult Science“:

In the South Seas there is a Cargo Cult of people. During the war they saw airplanes land with lots of good materials, and they want the same thing to happen now. So they’ve arranged to make things like runways, to put fires along the sides of the runways, to make a wooden hut for a man to sit in, with two wooden pieces on his head like headphones and bars of bamboo sticking out like antennas–he’s the controller–and they wait for the airplanes to land. They’re doing everything right. The form is perfect. It looks exactly the way it looked before. But it doesn’t work. No airplanes land. So I call these things Cargo Cult Science, because they follow all the apparent precepts and forms of scientific investigation, but they’re missing something essential, because the planes don’t land.

“Cargo Cult education seems to be all the rage in lots of communities,” Allison notes. “Sure, districts could just start grabbing lessons from high performing schools but that won’t make the students suddenly read or write. Unless they understand what’s underneath the ‘lessons of the high performing school’ then it won’t matter.”

Duncan to Principals: Release Your Inner Warrior!

Lesli Maxwell:

In his campaign for turning around the nation’s worst public schools, U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan this morning called for a cadre of “warrior principals.”
Speaking to principals from across the country, Mr. Duncan said that without strong leaders, any effort to dramatically transform the thousands of public schools that have failed for decades would be futile. He challenged the leaders to “take on the toughest job in America.”
“We need a team of warrior principals to leave the easier places and go into the most underserved communities with a chance to build a new team,” Mr. Duncan said to the roughly 350 principals who are in Washington this week for the annual meeting of the National Association of Elementary School Principals and National Association of Secondary School Principals. Mr. Duncan said he would need to enlist about 1,000 principals a year, over the next five years.
The secretary has been pushing hard for turning around thousands of failing schools, and has already implored other groups of educators, including the charter school movement, to get involved in that work. Mr. Duncan also asked the principals to work on fixing the “broken” teacher evaluation system by developing evaluations that are “fair, thoughtful, but meaningful.”

Wash. Board of Education revises math requirement

AP:

The State Board of Education has made a minor revision in the high school math credit requirements.
During a meeting in Gig Harbor on Friday, the board gave students more flexibility in their choices for high school math.
The board decided earlier that beginning with the class of 2013, high school students will be required to earn three credits of math to earn a diploma.
When the requirement was changed, the state rule said students who took a high school level math class without credit as an eighth grader were required to repeat that same course for credit in high school.

D.C. Chancellor Gains Ground With Aggressive Agenda

NPR Audio:

Washington, D.C., Public Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee is pushing forward with her efforts to turn around the local school system. Those efforts have thrust Rhee’s agenda onto a national stage, as educators across the country grapple with struggling school districts. Rhee discusses her work, which includes recently narrowing an achievement gap between white and minority students.

Testing Tactics Helped Fuel D.C. School Gains

Bill Turque:

When Mayor Adrian M. Fenty announced the continued growth of standardized test scores for District students Monday, he hailed it as “powerful evidence of the incredible work being done by teachers, principals and most importantly our students.”
What Fenty did not say was that the two-year improvement in District of Columbia Comprehensive Assessment System results — including an average of nearly 15 percentage points in the pass rates on elementary reading and math tests — was also the product of a strategy that relied on improved statistical housekeeping.
These include intensive test preparation targeted to a narrow group of students on the cusp of proficient, or passing, scores, and “cleaning the rosters” of students ineligible to take the tests — and also likely to pull the numbers down.
Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee described some of these approaches as the pursuit of “low-hanging fruit.”

History Is Scholarship; It’s Also Literature
Before we can educate graduate students about good writing,

Stephen J. Pyne:

History is a book-based discipline. We read books, we write books, we promote and tenure people on the basis of books, and at national meetings we gather around book exhibits. But we don’t teach our graduate students how to write books.
It’s an odd omission. We view statistics, geographic-information systems, languages, oral-history techniques, paleography, and other methodologies as worthy of attention in doctoral study–but not serious writing. Yet careers rise and fall on the basis of what we publish.
It may be that the scientific model of the grant-supported article is becoming more dominant, or that the simple production of data has become a sufficient justification for scholarship. Surely one reason is that research seminars offer enough time to compose an essay or a journal article but not a book, or even a book chapter. Perhaps an obsession with historiography has blocked interest in historical writing as literature, or the belief has arisen that the best way to meet the challenges of postmodern literary criticism is to deny its claims altogether, particularly since the contamination of memoir by fictional devices has tainted the whole question of applying “literary” techniques, borrowed from fiction, to nonfiction sources.
It may be simply that most of us don’t know how to teach writing–real writing, which is to say, finding the means to express what we want to say. Instead we defer to the off-the-shelf formulas of the favored journals and the thesis-evidence-conclusion style of traditional dissertations. We take students’ ideas for books and turn them into dissertations, and then expect them to magically reconvert them back into the books that originally motivated their imaginations and that their subsequent careers will require. While at least some historians are keen to unpack prose, few are eager to teach how to pack it properly in the first place. Whatever the reasons, serious writing isn’t taught. There isn’t even an accepted name for it.
Over the years my curiosity about that tendency ripened into concern. Then, a few years ago, while visiting at Australian National University, I was asked to lead a seminar on writing. That inspired me to offer a graduate course at my own institution on the theory and practice of making texts do what their writers wished. It would be English for historians, just as we might offer statistics for ecologists or chemistry for geologists. It’s been the best teaching experience of my career.
Initially I thought most of the students who enrolled would come from history; almost none of them did. Instead, my students came from biology, anthropology, journalism, English, geography, communications, and undeclared majors who strolled in more or less off the streets. The only historian who took it did so as an override in defiance of her program of study. What all of the students shared was a desire to write better, and generally to write something other than the oft-cribbed, formulaic prose required of their disciplines.

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Online Education and its Enemies

Liam Julian:

Holly Bates, an eight-year-old Florida girl, has such bad allergies that being near nuts or nut-based products–or even being near someone who has recently eaten nuts–can trigger anaphylactic shock. With peanut peril ubiquitous, young Holly is not enrolled in a traditional public school; instead, she attends Florida Connections Academy, a full-time “virtual” school that she accesses from her home computer. Her mother, a former public school teacher, loves the program. “The curriculum is unbelievable,” she told the Tampa Tribune in 2007. “It would astound you, the progress these children make.”
The Sunshine State is something of a virtual education pioneer. Since the 2003-04 school year, Florida has partnered with two for-profit companies–Connections Academy and K12 Inc.–to provide pupils with the option of attending school online, full-time, for free. But years before that, Florida was promoting other types of virtual education. Florida Virtual School is a statewide program that allows students to take individual courses online, often in subjects not offered at their local school, like Latin or Macroeconomics. It began in 1997 as a small grant-based project with just 77 course enrollments. Today, Florida Virtual School is its own school district and has an annual budget near $100 million. In the 2008-09 school year, according to Education Next, some “84,000 students will complete 168,000 half-credit courses, a ten-fold increase since 2002-03.” A newly-minted Florida Virtual School Connections Academy, announced in August 2008, will further expand online learning options and access.

Joanne has more.

Education Change Agent: Alex Johnston, CEO, ConnCAN

Education Gadfly via a kind reader’s email:

What drew you to working in the education field and what path did you take to end up where you are now?
I was in college during the LA riots of 1992, and seeing how quickly our society could pull apart at the seams really made me want to focus on addressing the underlying inequalities that produce such fragile ties in the first place. I was doing a lot of work with Habitat for Humanity in inner city Boston at the time, and that in turn led me to focus my undergrad studies on affordable housing and the politics of exclusionary zoning in the suburbs of Boston. After a diversion to grad school overseas, I landed back in New Haven, Connecticut for a stint of couch-surfing with friends while I finished up a doctoral dissertation on the impact of government funding on non-profit housing providers. I then took all that book learning and put it to the test by signing on to the management team that was charged with turning around the New Haven Housing Authority from the brink of receivership. It just so happened that one of those friends whose couch I’d been staying on was Dacia Toll, the founder of the Achievement First network of charter schools–and so I got a unique perspective on the incredible power of these schools to transform their students’ lives because so many of her kids were coming right out of the very same housing developments that I was managing. Rewarding as it was to help the housing authority’s residents reclaim their communities from years of neglect, once I began to appreciate how powerful schools could be in turning the cycle of poverty on its head, I was hooked.
And so about five years ago I was fortunate to connect with ConnCAN’s founding Board Chair, Jon Sackler. Together with an array of business, community and higher education leaders we founded ConnCAN on the premise that we need more than pockets of excellence to close Connecticut’s worst-in-the-nation achievement gap. We need statewide policies that allow educational innovations like Teach for America or Dacia’s schools to spread far and wide. And those policies will never be enacted unless we create the political will for them by building a movement of education reformers. We’ve been at it ever since, from the early days when it was just me and my dog working out of my house to today, when we’ve got a fantastic team of ten, and we’re well on our way to building a powerful, statewide movement for education reform.

Connected Kids At Elite High Schools

Alexander Russo:

‘ve been ignoring the UofI clout story for weeks now, feeling like it was more of a higher ed thing than something about local high schools, but this latest story from the Tribune really caught my eye:
Half of the 616 Illinois students who received preferential treatment from 2005 to 2009 graduated from just 22 high schools, all but one in the metro area. Highland Park High had the most kids on the list, with Loyola Academy coming in second. There were only 25 kids on the clout list from CPS schools.

Charter Schools Gain in Stimulus Scramble
Cash-Strapped States, Districts Signal Expansion of Public-Education Alternative Despite Some Teachers’ Strong Opposition

Rob Tomsho:

Some cash-strapped states and school districts are signaling a major expansion of charter schools to tap $5 billion in federal stimulus funds, despite strong opposition from some teachers unions.
Charter schools are typically non-unionized, publicly funded alternative schools that have been widely promoted by conservatives as a needed dose of competition in public education.
Last month, the Louisiana legislature voted to eliminate that state’s cap on new charter schools. The Tennessee legislature recently passed a bill expanding charter schools after U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan personally lobbied Democrats who had been blocking it. And the Rhode Island legislature reversed a plan to eliminate funding for new charters after Mr. Duncan warned such a move could hurt the state’s chances for grant money.
The most striking example may be in Massachusetts. Gov. Deval Patrick and Boston Mayor Tom Menino — both Democrats with histories of strong labor support — are proposing new state laws that would give them broader power to overhaul troubled schools, open more charter schools and revamp collective-bargaining agreements.
Mr. Menino, who oversees the Boston schools, wants Massachusetts communities to be able to transform traditional public schools into district-controlled charter schools and link teachers’ pay to performance.
Formerly a charter-school critic, Mr. Menino said he is fed up with opposition from the Boston Teachers Union. “I’m just tired of it,” he said. “We’re losing kids.”

Book Smarts? E-Texts Receive Mixed Reviews From Students

Ryan Knutson & Geofrey Fowler:

Last August, administrators at Northwest Missouri State University handed 19-year-old Darren Finney a Sony Corp. electronic-book Reader. The assignment for him and 200 other students: Use e-textbooks for studying, instead of heavy hardback texts.
At first, Mr. Finney worried about dropping the glass and metal device as he read. But eventually, the sophomore came to like the Reader. Its keyword search function, he says, was “easier than flipping through the pages of a regular book.” Dozens of other participants, however, dropped out of the program, complaining that the e-texts were awkward and inconvenient.
Nationwide, universities, high schools and elementary schools are launching initiatives like the one at Northwest Missouri State, testing whether electronic texts that can be viewed on e-book readers or on laptop computers can cut costs and improve learning.
This fall, Amazon.com Inc. is sponsoring a pilot program for its large-screen Kindle DX e-reader with hundreds of students across seven colleges, including Princeton University and University of Virginia. Meanwhile, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger wants to bring digital math and science textbooks to California’s secondary schools as early as this fall. (Heavy old books, the governor says, are useful as weights for arm curls.)

Stop Cyberbullying with Education

Larry Magid:

The first things you need to know about cyberbullying are that it’s not an epidemic and it’s not killing our children. Yes, it’s probably one of the more widespread youth risks on the Internet and yes there are some well publicized cases of cyberbullying victims who have committed suicide, but let’s look at this in context.
Bullying has always been a problem among adolescents and, sadly, so has suicide. In the few known cases of suicide after cyberbullying, there are other contributing factors. That’s not to diminish the tragedy or suggest that the cyberbullying didn’t play a role but–as with all online youth risk, we need to look at what else was going on in the child’s life. Even when a suicide or other tragic event doesn’t occur, cyberbullying is often accompanied by a pattern of offline bullying and sometimes there are other issues including long-term depression, problems at home, and self-esteem issues. And the most famous case of “cyberbullying”–the tragic suicide of 13-year-old Megan Meier–was far from typical. Cyberbullying is almost always peer to peer, but this was a case of an adult (the mom of one of Megan’s peers) being accused of seeking revenge on a child who had allegedly bullied her own child.

Online education: Raising Alabama

The Economist:

An experiment in levelling the playing field
ON A sweltering day in Alexander City, Alabama, summer school was in full swing. Two girls were reading “Julius Caesar” as two others wrestled with maths. A boy worked his way through a psychology quiz, and a teacher monitored an online discussion with students from around the state: Was Napoleon the last enlightened despot or the first modern dictator?
This is not a traditional classroom scene, but it has become common enough in Alabama. The state has many small, rural schools. Because of their size, and the relative scarcity of specialised teachers, course offerings have been limited. Students might have had to choose between chemistry or physics, or stop after two years of Spanish. But thanks to an innovative experiment with online education, the picture has changed dramatically.
In 2005 the governor, Bob Riley, announced a pilot programme called Alabama Connecting Classrooms Educators and Students Statewide, or ACCESS. The idea was to use internet and videoconferencing technology to link students in one town to teachers in another. It was something of a pet cause for Mr Riley, who comes from a rural county himself. He was especially keen that students should have a chance to learn Chinese.
……..
Joe Morton, the state superintendent of schools, points to the number of black students taking AP courses. In 2003, according to the College Board, just 4.5% of Alabama’s successful AP students (those who passed the subject exam) were black. In 2008 the number was up to 7.1%. There is still a staggering gap–almost a third of the state’s students are black–but the improvement in Alabama was the largest in the country over that period. “That makes it all worthwhile right there,” says Mr Morton.

Education reform in Massachusetts A chance for charters

The Economist:

Independent public schools may be getting a chance in the Bay State
MASSACHUSETTS ranks at or near the top of national measures of how well schoolchildren do at reading and mathematics. A leader in early-years education, it is also applauded for its vocational, technical and agriculture schools. Still, there are problems. The disparity between students in affluent districts and those in low-income urban ones is shocking. In the Concord/Carlisle school district, for instance, 92% of students graduated from high-school on time and planned to attend a four-year college or university in 2007, compared with just 12.8% in Holyoke, one of the poorest cities in the state.
Many states have turned to charter schools (self-governing publicly-funded schools) to close achievement gaps like that, but charters are a tricky subject in Massachusetts even though the few they do have, such as Boston Collegiate, are among the best in the country. Unions abhor them while the school boards that run most public schools fear losing power and funding. Politicians have been unwilling to take on Massachusetts’s mighty unions.
Last year Deval Patrick, the self-styled “education governor” of the state, unveiled a 55-point plan to overhaul the state’s education system. The governor’s package includes the introduction of three types of “readiness schools” to turn around poorly performing districts. Like charters, they will have greater flexibility, autonomy and will be held accountable for their results. But they will not be fully independent, remaining under the control of local school boards. Mr Patrick will introduce a bill authorising these schools later this month. One sort would have an external partner, such as a university, while another would be teacher-led.

Connecticut Schools, Charters, Politics, Parents and the Achievement Gap

Sam Dillon:

Connecticut is another Northern state where achievement gaps are larger than in states across the South, the federal study shows. That is partly because white students in Connecticut score above the national average, but also because blacks there score lower, on average, than blacks elsewhere”.

This validates my personal belief, and something that I have been saying for several years now, that Connecticut does not have great public schools, rather, it has one of if not the highest percentages of households with 4-year and advanced college degrees (CT, NJ and MA are always at the top of this list). This high percentage of well educated households makes Connecticut’s public schools look good — it is the household that is the difference maker, not the public schools. To prove my point, why is it that not one DRG B school does not outperform just one DRG A school?…or just one DRG C school out perform just one DRG B school?…makes no sense if the school were in fact the difference maker. DRG = Demographic Reference Group which is how the Dept. of Ed. here in CT groups all of its school districts to rate performance and other statistical data. It is generally rated by median household income but size of the community and other socioeconomic factors are part of the equation too. A = the most wealthy communities (also the “best” schools) and it goes down form there.
…it is all about socio-economics not how great Connecticut’s public schools are, which they are not.
Connecticut’s high-performing, public charter schools are making a difference, and that is an objective statement based on proven data.
We should do everything in our powers to embrace the proven Achievement First (Amistad Academy) model and replicate it far and wide. Why it is being stiff-armed by our legislators and the teachers union is simply bewildering. But then again both have proven to put their interests (political careers and pay checks) first and Connecticut’s children second — the teachers union is particularly good at that.

Connecticut owns one of nation’s largest black-white achievement gaps

AP, via a kind reader’s email:

Despite unprecedented efforts to improve minority achievement in the past decade, the gap between black and white students remains frustratingly wide, according to an Education Department report released Tuesday.
There is good news in the report: Reading and math scores are improving for black students across the country. But because white students are also improving, the disparity between blacks and whites has lessened only slightly.
On average, the gap narrowed by about 7 points from 1992 to 2007, so that black students scored about 28 points behind white students on a 500-point scale.

Study: Achievement gap persists in Minnesota, rest of U.S.

Tom Weber:

A new report from the U.S. Education Department shows black students are scoring better in math and reading, but not enough to close a nationwide gap between them and white students.
The study also shows Minnesota has one of the nation’s largest achievement gaps, but not necessarily for the reasons you might think.
The study looked at fourth and eighth-grade math and reading scores from a nationwide achievement test called the NAEP.
The test is scored on a 500-point scale. Of the students the study looked at, black students scored 26-to-31 points below white students in reading and math.
The study concludes that every state still has an achievement gap, but at least that gap isn’t getting any bigger. Fifteen states saw their gap shrink on fourth-grade math, but not a single state has narrowed the gap in eighth-grade reading.
The disparity, though, is not caused by black students getting worse. Scores for blacks continue to improve, but they’re also improving for white students. Researchers note it’s hard to close the gap when everyone is improving.
Minnesota, meanwhile, has one of the nation’s largest achievement gaps. But again, that’s not necessarily because blacks are slipping, according to Jim Angermeyr, the head of research for Bloomington schools.

Education Reform

Jeff Nolan:

There is a lot of talk in California right now about how the budget crisis will affect education investments, and I write investments very deliberately because education spending is a form of investment that is supposed to yield future returns. It’s evident that we’ll have to deal with the budget hole by cutting education spending rather dramatically, in fact it is absolutely unavoidable because education spending is about 50% of the state budget and when you include all of the other initiative mandated spending, the state government controls less than 20% of the actual budget… with a $26b hole in the budget the state could cut every dollar spent on things not mandated by voters and there would still be a deficit.
Okay, so we’re going to have a less generously funded school system, a system that already competes for last place in the country in terms of educational quality. There is also the reality that we will dramatically reduce our funding for community colleges and at the same time raise fees, a reality for the California State University system and the University of California system.
While we are going through this fiscal realignment is it not also appropriate to ask what we are getting out of our education system? K-12 is a basket case and parents with economic means opt out of the system while those on lower income tiers are effectively denied something every child deserves, a quality education.

A failing grade for Maryland math

Liz Bowie:

Maryland’s public schools are teaching mathematics in such a way that many graduates cannot be placed in entry-level college math classes because they do not have a grasp of the basics, according to education experts and professors.
College math professors say there is a gap between what is taught in the state’s high schools and what is needed in college. Many schools have de-emphasized drilling students in basic math, such as multiplication and division, they say.
“We have hordes of students who come in and have forgotten their basic arithmetic,” said Donna McKusick, dean for developmental education at the Community College of Baltimore County. College professors say students are taught too early to rely on calculators. “You say, ‘What is seven times seven?’ and they don’t know,” McKusick said.
Ninety-eight percent of Baltimore students signing up for classes at Baltimore City Community College had to pay for remedial classes to learn the material that should have been covered in high school. Across Maryland, 49 percent of the state’s high school graduates take remedial classes in college before they can take classes for credit.

Wonk alert! More details on Obama’s community college proposal

Mary Beth Marklein:

Wonk alert! I’m posting additional background information on the community college initiative that President Obama announced today, along with a link to the Council of Economic Advisers report, out Monday, called Preparing the Workers of Today for the Jobs of Tomorrow.
The name of Obama’s proposal: The American Graduation Initiative
The cost: see what I’ve underlined below.
The four main features:

Frederick Hess has more.

Sloppy Wisconsin K-12 budget hits Madison, other schools hard

Scott Milfred:

It’s not just Madison schools getting hit with a much bigger cut in state aid than expected.
Middleton-Cross Plains is in the same leaky boat. So are schools in Adams-Friendship, Green Lake, Markesan, Montello, Princeton, Westfield and Wisconsin Dells.
State lawmakers had said no school district in Wisconsin should experience a state aid cut of more than 10 percent, under the state budget just signed into law.
But more than 90 school districts, including all of those listed above, just learned they’re facing cuts greater than 15 percent. In addition, school districts including Lodi and Cambridge are facing cuts of more than 12 percent.
It’s a stunning blow to local schools.
In Madison, it means the worst-case scenario of a 10 percent cut of $6 million next school year just became a much bigger reduction of more than $9 million.
That’s likely to trigger higher local property taxes and cuts to instruction — despite last fall’s referendum that was supposed to steady Madison schools for three years.

CAST July 09 MMSD Budget Statement

via a TJ Mertz and Jackie Woodruff email: July 15, 2009
The school referendum approved overwhelmingly by Madison Metropolitan School District voters in November 2008 was based on a “Partnership Plan” that promised to maintain educational quality, initiate a community-wide strategic planning process, and mitigate the impact on property tax-payers in a variety of ways.
While the school district remains committed to the principles of this Partnership Plan, with the uncertain economy many things have changed since November. Most significantly, the recently enacted state budget has left MMSD facing what now looks like a $9 million reduction in state aid as well as requiring an almost $3 million reduction in expenditures for the 2009-10 school year.
As the MMSD Board of Education seeks ways to address the shortfalls created by the state budget, Community and Schools Together (CAST) believes it is important that the community recognize that this problem was created by state officials, not local decisions. The reductions in revenues and in funding for targeted programs (via categorical aids) will impact every district in the state. Madison is one of about 100 districts that have had their general state aid cut by 15%, but almost all districts are experiencing significant reductions in state support and will be contemplating higher than anticipated property tax increases.
These cuts come after 16 years of inadequate funding, annual cuts in most districts as well as reductions of the state’s portion of education costs in recent years. This recent state budget moves us further away from the sustainable, equitable and adequate educational investments that are needed to keep Madison and Wisconsin strong and competitive.
It is also important that the community understand that the tax and revenue projections in the Partnership Plan and those used in the preliminary district budget passed in May were good projections made in good faith based on the best available information. That preliminary budget strengthened education and held property tax mil rate increase to 1¢ (far below the 11¢ increase anticipated prior to the referendum).
In the coming months the Board of Education must find ways to meet the shortfalls created by the state budget. There are no good choices.
These choices involve some combination re-budgeting and re-allocating, potential new cuts, use of the district’s recently growing fund balance, temporarily employing targeted stimulus monies, or increasing the local tax levy. CAST urges the Board to retain their commitment to quality education and community involvement. We also ask the community to take advantage of opportunities to let all our state and local elected officials know that Madison values education.
###
Community and Schools Together (CAST) is a grass roots organization dedicated to securing sustainable, adequate and equitable public education investments in Madison and Wisconsin.
(Contact) CAST Co-Chairs:
Thomas J. Mertz – 608-255-1542, Carol Carstensen – 608-255-8441, Troy Dassler — 608-241-5183

Helping Students, in and Out of School

Letters to the NY Times Editor:

“Lessons for Failing Schools” (editorial, July 6) says Education Secretary Arne Duncan, with a $100 billion educational stimulus fund at his disposal, is right to focus on transforming 5,000 low-performing schools that account for the majority of minority dropouts. But if it were that easy — just a matter of spending money — the country would have probably done it long ago.
What we are facing is more than a school problem caused by the schools alone. It is a pervasive set of problems in some minority communities, including fatherless households, teenage dropout mothers, drugs and a culture that disparages education, along with some incredibly poor teaching.
The first thing Mr. Duncan should do is to ensure that minority children and their families who really want to do well and are trying hard get the opportunity to escape to charter and other schools so they aren’t dragged down by the mass failures we are witnessing in public urban education.

The 25 Best Foods for Fitness

Chap.com:

When it comes to choosing the foods we eat, we have so many choices that it often becomes confusing. As Americans, we are blessed with almost every kind of food imaginable, available right next door at the supermarket. There are, however, some very specific foods that help improve athletic performance. The foods listed below are particular important to keep in your diet. The following foods, in alphabetical order, provide premium fuel for the active athlete.

State lags in closing achievement gap

Gayle Worland:

Wisconsin lags behind the rest of the nation in closing the achievement gap between black and white students, according to a U.S. Department of Education report released Tuesday.
Based on data from 2007, the National Assessment of Education Progress study shows some academic improvement among black and white students nationwide, with the gap in test scores between the two groups narrowing in a number of states. Wisconsin stands out as the only state with a racial achievement gap wider than the national average in all four categories measured: math for grades four and eight, and reading for grades four and eight.
Scores among black Wisconsin students were lower than their national peers in all four categories. White students in Wisconsin scored slightly above the national average in math, but below the national average for reading in grade four. The largest gap between white and black Wisconsin students was in math at grade eight, with a 45-point difference between their test scores on a 0-500 point scale.
…….
Closing the achievement gap is important to the Madison School District, said district spokesman Ken Syke.
“It’s not a zero-sum situation,” Syke said. “As we work to raise the achievement level of students of color, we still work as educators to continue to raise the achievement level of students who are not of color. It’s not like if you’re pouring resources into one you’re not pouring resources into the other.”

Madison School Board Discussion: Private/Parochial, Open Enrollment Leave, Open Enrollment Enter, Home Based Parent Surveys

22MB mp3 audio file. A summary of the survey can be seen here. The Board and Administration are to be commended for this effort. It will be interesting to see how this initiative plays out.

Fine Arts Task Force Report Discussion – Audio

The Madison School Board’s discussion last evening via a 42MB mp3 audio file. An interesting discussion, particularly with respect to the School District’s interaction with the community and the Teaching & Learning Department. Much more on the Fine Arts Task Force here.

The Culture Wars’ New Front: U.S. History Classes in Texas

Stephanie Simon:

The fight over school curriculum in Texas, recently focused on biology, has entered a new arena, with a brewing debate over how much of the Bible belongs in American history classrooms.
The Texas Board of Education, which recently approved new science standards that made room for creationist critiques of evolution, is revising the state’s social studies curriculum. In early recommendations from outside experts appointed by the board, a divide has opened over how central religious theology should be to the teaching of history.
Three reviewers, appointed by social conservatives, have recommended revamping the K-12 curriculum to put the Bible, the Christian faith and the civic virtue of religion front-and-center in the study of American history. Two of them want to remove or de-emphasize references to several historical figures who have become liberal icons, such as César Chávez and Thurgood Marshall.

Why America is flunking science

Chris Mooney and Sheril Kirshenbaum:

In the recent Tom Hanks/Ron Howard film “Angels & Demons,” science sets the stage for destruction and chaos. A canister of antimatter has been stolen from CERN — the European Organization for Nuclear Research — and hidden in the Vatican, set to explode right as a new pope is about to be selected.
Striving to make these details as realistic as possible on screen, Howard and his film crew visited CERN, used one of its physicists as a science consultant, and devoted meticulous care to designing the antimatter canister that Hanks’ character, Robert Langdon, and his sexy scientist colleague, Vittoria Vetra (Ayelet Zurer), wind up searching for.
But there was nothing they could do about the gigantic impossibility at the center of the plot. While the high-energy proton collisions generated at CERN do occasionally produce minute quantities of antimatter — particles with the opposite electrical charge as protons and electrons, but the same mass, which can in turn be combined into atoms like antihydrogen — it’s not remotely enough to power a bomb. As CERN quips on a Web site devoted to “Angels & Demons,” antimatter “would be very dangerous if we could make a few grams of it, but this would take us billions of years.”

Education data system key to additional federal stimulus money

Kristi Swartz:

Almost like being tagged with a barcode, at some point schoolchildren in Georgia will receive a unique number that tracks their test scores and other data from the moment they enter kindergarten until they’ve graduated.
Such a data system, which would update nightly, school officials say, may sound like a pipe dream. In fact, if the state wants a crack at a huge pot of additional stimulus money from the U.S. Department of Education, that system must one day become a reality.
The money, $4 billion total in what Education Secretary Arne Duncan has dubbed the “Race to the Top” fund, will be distributed next year at Duncan’s discretion.
A strong data system is one of four measures the secretary will use in awarding the grants. The others are creating international academic standards, turning around low-performing schools and teacher quality.
Because of the sums of money involved, and because the grants will only go to a few states, the Race to the Top represents a potentially enormous payoff.
The amount of the grants or how they will be distributed is unknown at this point.

Should High Schools Bar Average Students From Rigorous College-Level Courses and Tests?

Jay Matthews:

Fifteen years ago, when I discovered that many good high schools prevented average students from taking demanding courses, I thought it was a fluke, a mistake that would soon be rectified.
I had spent much time inside schools that did the opposite. They worked hard to persuade students to take challenging classes and tests, such as Advanced Placement, International Baccalaureate and Cambridge, so students would be ready for the shock of their first semester at college, which most average students attend. The results were good. Why didn’t all schools do that?
I still don’t have a satisfactory answer. It always comes up this time of year because of my annual rankings of public high schools for Newsweek, which is based on schools’ efforts to challenge average kids as measured by participation in AP, IB and Cambridge tests.
Many school superintendents and principals who run schools that restrict access to those college-level courses and tests have disappointing results on the Newsweek list. Some of them object to my methodology. It is clear from my conversations with them that they are smart and compassionate people.

What about a 2 Year Salary Freeze for K-12 Educators?

UW-system public educators not only have a 2 year freeze but a reduction of just over 3% via furloughs. WHY would K-12 public educators by exempt?! The QEO has been REPEALED effective IMMEDIATELY this month!
More: Freeze needs to include Janesville Education Association members:

FULL DISCLOSURE! Yes, I know some readers are going to be pointing the finger at me asserting: YOU hypocrite! YOU were a member of WEAC and JEA from 1971 through your retirement in June 2000. TRUE! I was a member of WEAC and JEA through the WI K-12 public education funding formula (QEO, State Revenue Cap, 2/3 aid) from its inception (1993-95 WI State Budget) through my retirement in June 2000. I served as the Co-chair of the Joint Legislative Committee representing the JEA from January 1998 through June 2000. I am very PROUD of the work which the Joint Legislative Committee did to study the issues of K-12 public education funding in WI and the recommendations which were issued in September 1998 with the goal of influencing the fall 1998 elections. The Joint Legislative Committee became a very effective advocate for effective reform of the K-12 public education funding formula in WI. The Committee was directly involved in the organization of the Wisconsin Alliance for Excellent Schools through co-chair, Virginia Wyss, President of the Janesville Board of Education. Virginia continues to be actively involved in the leadership of WAES. (WAES – URL: http://www.excellentschools.org)

New York Must Start Putting Teacher Training Schools to the Test

Merryl Tisch:

In the coming year New York State will play a leading role in the movement to set one high national standard for all our school children. We will look to raise the bar to require that all students leave high school not only proficient on state tests – but ready for higher education.
But it won’t be enough to simply raise standards and hope for the best. We also need to do a much better job preparing our teachers. After all, study after study confirms that teacher quality is the single most important factor in boosting student performance that is under the control of schools.
In cases when our students aren’t learning, we must start to question, among other things, the preparation of their teachers.
Improving the quality of teaching in New York will mean partnering with the institutions that train our classroom instructors – SUNY 23%, CUNY 11% and independent colleges 66%.

Still behind – Chicago Public Schools

Chicago Tribune Editorial:

So how are we going to know if Chicago’s public schools are succeeding?
Mayor Richard Daley and school officials boasted this week that Chicago kids’ performance on state standardized tests edged higher in all categories and all grades this year. One snapshot: 76.2 percent of 8th graders met or exceeded standards on the Illinois Standards Achievement Test.
But we’ve known for some time now that nobody can put much faith in the ISAT. In 2006, state education officials significantly changed the test. Like magic, the test results took a leap.
What really happened: Illinois responded to pressure from the federal No Child Left Behind law by deciding it was simpler to make the tests easier than make the kids smarter.

Pure Parents has more.

Charter Schools Aren’t the Solution for Virginia

Kitty Boitnott:

The Obama administration and The Post are fascinated with charter schools [editorial, July 5], but charters do not make sense for Virginia. Maybe charter schools are needed in the District or Chicago, but in Virginia they are a solution looking for a problem.
The first question to consider is whether charter schools actually work. A recent study by the Rand Corp. suggests that they produce about the same results as traditional public schools.
Charter schools haven’t flourished in Virginia because our school boards already have the autonomy to create specialty schools. In the Richmond area alone we have schools that specialize in the arts; engineering; communication; languages; the humanities; technology; international studies; leadership and government; global economics; the military; science and mathematics; and technology. We have governor’s schools, magnet schools and centers for the gifted, and the list goes on and on. Virginia school boards, unlike those in states where charters have proliferated, don’t need charter legislation to allow flexibility and innovation. Our school boards have great autonomy and flexibility. They are free to innovate, and they do.

Online Discussion: Teachers Unions and Professional Work

Education Sector, via a kind reader’s email:

Welcome to Education Sector’s online discussion of teachers’ work and teachers unions. Last year, we released results from a survey of public school teachers, Waiting to Be Won Over: Teachers Speak on the Profession, Unions, and Reform, which revealed a mix of opinions about the role of unions in school reform. Teachers believe unions are essential, the survey found, particularly for safeguarding jobs. But the survey also found teachers to be surprisingly open to change, and to the idea that unions should drive rather than resist reform. So what does this mean for the future of teachers unions? To delve into this further, we have assembled a group of current and recent teachers from different kinds of schools, different parts of the country, and with different views on this question.
Briefly, they are, Laura Bornfreund, a former Florida teacher who now works for Common Core, an organization focused on the liberal arts in education; Julie Eisenband, a teacher and adviser at SAGE Academy Charter School in Brooklyn Park, Minn.; Arthur Goldstein, who teaches English as a Second Language at Francis Lewis High School in Queens, N.Y.; Caitlin Hollister, a third-grade teacher from Boston Public Schools; and Bruce William Smith from Green Dot Public Schools in Los Angeles. Education policy expert Paul T. Hill from the Center on Reinventing Public Education is also joining us to provided national context and to discuss research he has done on teachers unions and charter schools. (Panelist biographies here.)

DPS gives control of lagging schools to private sector

Marisa Schultz:

Detroit Public Schools Emergency Financial Manager Robert Bobb announced Friday that he has hired four educational management companies to turn around 17 of the worst-performing high schools in the district, a move that marks what leaders say is the largest public school district overhaul of its kind in the nation.
“We have not been making the grade,” Bobb said at a press conference at Central High School.
School board members expressed shock and dismay Friday — just one day after they rolled out their own academic plan that they’ve asked Bobb to fund. Some accused Bobb of overstepping his bounds as a financial manager by launching an academic plan that will affect 20,000 students in three-quarters of the district’s high schools without the board’s knowledge.
The board was charged with working on the academics, while Gov. Jennifer Granholm brought in Bobb to work on the finances for a year.
“We have asked Robert Bobb to do a very difficult job and he needs the authority to do it right,” said Granholm’s spokeswoman Liz Boyd, noting Bobb is not overstepping his role. “He doesn’t need to be micromanaged.”
The district signed multiyear contracts with four out-of-state companies that will be funded through $20 million in federal stimulus dollars. The aim is to improve student achievement, discipline, respect, safety and graduation rates, district officials said.

Task force on Minn. high schools taking shape

AP:

A task force asked to suggest ways to design an accountability system for Minnesota high schools is seeking suggestions itself.
The panel created this spring by the Legislature is soliciting advice through July 15 on the key issues it should tackle.
From there, the task force plans to produce a report on high school assessments and accountability. Preliminary recommendations could be out this fall, and the goal is to deliver a final report to the state education commissioner and lawmakers by year’s end.

Middle Class Children in KIPP

Catharine Bellinger, a Princeton sophomore who has plans to start a campus journal on education policy.
I suggested she practice with a topic provocative enough to get her in trouble, a good place for all writers to be. My question to her, inspired by her experiences in the D.C. schools, is: “Should middle class parents send their kids to KIPP?”
I have written a great deal about that successful network of public charter schools, known for raising the achievement of low-income students in our poorest urban and rural neighborhoods. I am hearing from some middle-class parents who would like some of that teaching for their own children. Here is Bellinger’s take on whether that will work. Her email address is cbelling@princeton.edu. Let her, and me, know what you think.
By Catharine Bellinger”>:

Monona School Board Abolishes Standing Committees

Peter Sobol:

But after some discussion the board voted to abolish the standing committees (Curriculum, Policy and Business Services) and instead move to two meetings of the entire board each month. Concerns were mostly expressed about the inefficient use of staff time under the current system.
My feeling is that we risk distancing ourselves from the community and will have diminished working relationships with the administrators. My observation has been that the board’s best work gets done at the committee level as items well vetted in committee tend to be broadly supported by the board. I am worried about the efficiency of trying to work out the details on issues with the larger group, this issue already came up tonight when it was suggested we would need a special policy committee to work through several pending policy issues.

Madison School District: Private/Parochial, Open Enrollment Leave, Open Enrollment Enter, Home Based Parent Surveys

Kurt Kiefer, MMSD Chief Information Officer [1.3MB PDF]:

This memo is a summary of the results from the surveys completed during the past school year with various parent groups whose children reside within the MMSD attendance area but receive certain alternative education options. Also included are results of the survey conducted with non-residents who attend MMSD schools via the Open Enrollment program (Le., Open Enrollment Enter).

Background
Groups were surveys representing households whose students were enrolled in one of four different educational settings: MMSD resident students attending private/parochial schools, MMSD resident students attending other public schools via the Open Enrollment program, non-resident students attending MMSD schools via the Open Enrollment program, and MMSD resident students provided home based instruction.

The surveys were conducted between December 2008 and February 2009. The surveys were mailed to households or they could complete the survey online. Two mailings were conducted – the initial mailing to all households and a second to non-respondents as a reminder request. Total group sizes and responses are provided below.

This document will be discussed at Monday evening’s Madison School Board meeting.
UPDATE:

Complete survey results can be found here [250K PDF]
Madison School Board discussion of this survey (mp3 audio)

Everybody Hates The Teachers’ Unions Now

Mickey Kaus:

When Father Hesburgh throws down … How can we know when the tide of respectable opinion has decisively turned against the teachers’ unions? When a panel that includes Father Hesburgh, Birch Bayh. Bill Bradley, Eleanor Holmes Norton and Roger Wilkins goes medieval on them, saying their resistance to reforms designed to hold schools accountable has hurt “disadvantaged students” and led to “calcified systems in which talented people are deterred from applying or staying as teachers …”
Here are two undiplomatic grafs from the report’s final page:

The unions have battled against the principle that schools and education agencies should be held accountable for the academic progress of their students. They have sought to water down the standards adopted by states to reflect what students should know and be able to do. They have attacked assessments designed to measure the progress of schools, seeking to localize decisions about test content so that the performance of students in one school or community cannot be compared with others. They have resisted innovative ways-such as growth models-to assess student performance.
In their attack on education reform, the national unions have often been unconstrained by considerations of propriety and fairness. They have sought to inject weakening amendments in appropriations bills, hoping that they would prevail if no hearings were held and the public was unaware of their efforts. They have used the courts to launch an attack on education reform, employing arguments that could imperil many federal assistance programs going back to the New Deal. They have failed to inform their own members of the content of federal reform laws.

Locally, it will be interesting to see what substantive changes, if any, come out of the current Madison School District / Madison Teachers, Inc. bargaining.

Hawaii Board of Education Approves 12.6% Budget Reduction ($227M on $1.8Billion Annual Spending)

Loren Moreno:

Faced with the most drastic budget cuts ever to the state’s public education system, the Board of Education approved a plan yesterday that includes about $117 million in yet-to-be negotiated labor savings — from potential pay cuts to furloughs of teachers and administrators.

The plan, which trims a total of $227 million from the $1.8 billion school system budget, includes a 5 percent across-the-board cut to school-level programs, a reduction of part-time workers and slashing of school-level funding.

Several board members said the plan is certain to have repercussions on teaching and learning.

“There is nobody in this room who wants to do what we’re about to do. But the fiscal reality is such that we have to do this,” said board member John Penebacker.

An Alternative Path to Teaching

Kevin Brown:

The recent job market reminds me of when I finished my doctorate in the mid-1990s. Though the market was not as saturated then, it definitely was not conducive to finding a job. I applied to more than 100 colleges and universities, garnering only a phone interview at one college, where I happened to know two people on the search committee. I made it to a final cut of 10, but no further.
However, I knew that I wanted to teach, so I adjusted my plans and applied for positions at independent high schools (also known as “private schools,” but they do not care for that designation). For those struggling in this job market, I would suggest that this path has numerous benefits and few drawbacks, especially for someone beginning a career.
First, independent schools have talented, often highly motivated students. At the first school I worked at, I taught sophomores and juniors, not in Advanced Placement classes or even Honors classes. The sophomores read The Scarlet Letter, among other works, and the curriculum for the juniors included Beowulf, The Canterbury Tales, Hamlet, Macbeth, Jane Eyre, Tess of the D’Urbervilles, Heart of Darkness, and the British Romantic poets. Teachers assigned works such as Moby-Dick to their classes, and none of us were disappointed in the students’ responses to the level of difficulty. In fact, we had to move through Heart of Darkness quickly, as the end of the semester was approaching, and neither of my junior classes complained about the pace or load for what is a difficult read for the college sophomores I now teach in a non-majors course at a four-year, liberal arts university.

Related: via Janet Mertz.

Teachers union attacks Schwarzenegger’s proposed suspension of Proposition 98

Michael Rothfeld:

The California Teachers Assn. unveiled a television ad Thursday attacking Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger for his proposal to suspend Proposition 98, the law that sets funding guarantees for schools.
Schwarzenegger last week proposed reducing the guarantee by $3 billion for the coming fiscal year to help address the state’s $26.3-billion deficit.
The well-funded union, which has turned public opinion against the governor in the past, focuses its commercial on Schwarzenegger’s failure in 2005 to repay money he had promised to return after suspending the guarantee the year before. “He said he was sorry,” the ad says. “He said never again. . . . And now Schwarzenegger says he’ll break the minimum guarantee to our schools again.”
Schwarzenegger spokesman Aaron McLear said the governor would not be dissuaded.

Indiana providing teaching fellowships in Science, Technology, Engineering & Mathematics (STEM)

The Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation:

The Woodrow Wilson Indiana Teaching Fellowship seeks to attract talented, committed individuals with backgrounds in the STEM fields–science, technology, engineering, and mathematics–into teaching in high-need Indiana high schools. Learn more…
Funded through a $10 million grant from the Lilly Endowment, the Fellowship offers rigorous disciplinary and pedagogical preparation, extensive clinical experience, and ongoing mentoring. Eligible applicants include current undergraduates, recent college graduates, midcareer professionals, and retirees who have majored in, or had careers in, STEM fields.

When will the MMSD and the State of WI follow suit?
Related:

Drivers of Choice: Parents, Transportation, and School Choice

Paul Teske, Jody Fitzpatrick, Tracey O’Brien, via a kind reader’s email:

Transportation is clearly a consideration to be factored into any discussion of school choice. Yet we know very little about how much it matters in family’s decisions about their children’s school, and almost nothing about how much of a barrier it is to school choice, especially for low-income families. How far does the average family want their child to travel to school? Would they be as comfortable letting their younger children travel as far as they might a middle or high school student? What transportation options are available to low-income families? These are the kinds of questions we tried to address in this study, in order to obtain meaningful data to help shape school transportation policy.

This project first surveyed the landscape of transportation and school choices. It examined the density of large districts in the U.S. The project team contacted large school districts to find out their policies on transportation and choice, then examined district budgets to see how much they actually spend on transportation. Most importantly, the project surveyed families in two cities—Denver and Washington, D.C.—to find out their travel patterns and school choice options. The study breaks down that data, collected from households earning less than $75,000 in annual income, to determine how much transportation is a barrier to choice.

This report addresses the following questions:

More Rigorous Requirements for Teacher Education Will Encourage Programs To Emphasize Clinical Training, Focus on Critical Needs of P-12 Schools

The National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education, via a kind reader’s email:

As part of the first major revision of teacher education requirements in 10 years, i nstitutions seeking the NCATE seal of approval must either demonstrate that they are on track to reach an “excellent” level of performance, rather than remain at an “acceptable level,” or make transformative changes in key areas, such as:

strengthening the clinical focus of their programs to better prepare educators to meet the needs of today’s P-12 students and foster increases in student learning
demonstrating the impact of their programs and graduates on P-12 student learning
increasing knowledge about what works in teacher education to improve P-12 student learning, using a research and development strategy to build better knowledge and help institutions use that knowledge to improve programs, and
addressing critical needs of schools, such as recruiting talented teachers and bolstering teacher retention.

The new accreditation strategy, approved by the NCATE Executive Board last month, creates two alternative pathways to accreditation. The Continuous Improvement track raises the target level of performance beyond the “acceptable” level. The second pathway, the Transformation Initiative track, encourages institutions to build the base of evidence in the field about what works in teacher preparation and help the P-12 schools they serve address major challenges, from raising student achievement to retaining teachers.

School Choice and Supreme Court Nominee Sonia Sotomayor

Andy Smarick:

Will Judge Sonia Sotomayor’s life experience, including attending a private Catholic school, lead to an uncomfortable conclusion–that government-supported school choice is just?
The Obama administration has made Judge Sonia Sotomayor’s life story a central part of her introduction to the nation as a Supreme Court nominee. The administration has focused attention on her inspiring, only-in-America path from public housing through elite institutions of higher education to the top of the legal profession.
……
Consequently, we might expect to see these experiences clearly reflected in their positions on three contemporary issues.
First, President Obama ought to be a vigorous defender of the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program, which provides vouchers to low-income students in the nation’s capital so they can attend private schools.
Second, the president should be expected to act forcefully to save America’s urban Catholic and other faith-based schools, which are disappearing at a rapid pace, robbing disadvantaged families of desperately needed private education options.
Third, we should expect Judge Sotomayor to decide in favor of school choice programs while on the bench.
In practice, however, there appears to be a limit to the influence of personal experience. President Obama failed to stand up for the D.C. voucher program, and Democratic congressional leaders went after it with a vengeance. If his 2010 budget is adopted, no new students will be allowed into the program, and it will slowly wither away. Similarly, while his Department of Education has $100 billion in stimulus funding for America’s schools, neither he nor Education Secretary Arne Duncan has uttered a word about preserving faith-based urban schools.

Duncan’s Donut: The Ed. Sec.’s Impact on Chicago Student Achievement Was Near Zero

Andrew Coulson:

For seven months, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and the media have bombarded us with tales of how Duncan dramatically boosted student achievement as leader of Chicago Public Schools. Based on two new independent analyses, Duncan’s real impact appears to have been near zero.
The usual evidence presented for Duncan’s success is the rise in the pass rate of elementary and middle school students on Illinois’ own ISAT test. But state tests like the ISAT are notoriously unreliable (they tend to be corrupted by teaching to the test and subject to periodic “realignments” in which the passing grade is lowered or the test content is eased). In January, the Schools Matter blog argued that exactly such a realignment had occurred in 2006.
So to get a reliable measure of Duncan’s impact, I pulled up the 4th and 8th grade math and reading scores for Chicago on the National Assessment of Educational Progress — a test that is much less susceptible to massaging by states and districts. I then compared the score changes in Chicago to those for all students in Large Central Cities around the nation, and tested if the small differences between them were statistically significant. Not one of them is even remotely significant at even the loosest accepted measure of significance (the p < 0.1 level). Chicago students did no better than those in similar districts around the nation between 2002/2003 and 2007, a period covering virtually all of Duncan's tenure in Chicago.

Newark Starts a Summer School Aimed at Advanced Placement

Winnie Hu:

Advanced Placement classes do not begin at Science Park High School until September, but Cristiana De Oliveira will spend many a summer day sitting behind a desk in A.P. calculus for five hours rather than lounging by a swimming pool.
Cristiana is one of 335 students signed up for Newark’s new A.P. Summer Institute, in which A.P. courses in calculus, biology, United States history and English language and literature each get an intensive two-week introduction, paid for with $300,000 in federal grants.
Intended to help increase enrollment in the special courses as well as student performance, the new program, which starts on Monday, is expected to reach more than half the students taking Advanced Placement classes this fall in the 40,000-student Newark school district.
“We’re in a stressful environment in school, and if we can start now, it will be a lot easier,” said Cristiana, 17, a senior who will be getting up at 6:30 a.m. and riding two public buses to reach the high school for the summer program.

K-12 Tax & Spending Climate: Tax Bill Appeals Take Rising Toll on Governments

Jack Healy:

Homeowners across the country are challenging their property tax bills in droves as the value of their homes drop, threatening local governments with another big drain on their budgets.
The requests are coming in record numbers, from owners of $10 million estates and one-bedroom bungalows, from residents of the high-tax enclaves surrounding New York City, and from taxpayers in the Rust Belt and states like Arizona, Florida and California, where whole towns have been devastated by the housing bust.
“It’s worthy of a Dickens story,” said Gus Kramer, the assessor in Contra Costa County, Calif., outside San Francisco. “These people are desperate. They know their home’s gone down in value. They’ve watched their neighborhoods being boarded up. They literally stand in there and say: ‘When can I have my refund check? I need to feed my family. I need to pay my electric bill.’ “

Lessons for Failing Schools

NY Times Editorial:

Mr. Duncan has said from the start that he wants the states to transform about 5,000 of the lowest-performing schools, not in a piecemeal fashion but with bold policies that have an impact right away. The argument in favor of a tightly focused effort aimed at these schools is compelling. We now know, for example, that about 12 percent of the nation’s high schools account for half the country’s dropouts generally — and almost three-quarters of minority dropouts. A plan that fixed these schools, raising high school graduation and college-going rates, would pay enormous dividends for the country as a whole.
Mr. Duncan can use his burgeoning discretionary budget to reward states that take the initiative in this area. But Congress could push the reform effort further and faster by granting the education department’s request for two changes in federal education law. The first would be to come up with new federal school improvement money and require the states to focus 40 percent of it on the lowest-performing middle and high schools. The second change would allow the secretary to directly finance charter-school operators that have already produced high-quality schools.

Q & A With US Education Secretary Arne Duncan

Chicago Tribune:

ucation Secretary Arne Duncan recently answered questions about his goals and relationship with the business community. An edited transcript:
QWhy include business in the policy debate about public education?
AWe all need to work together on this stuff, business leaders and educators. Everyone’s mutual interests are absolutely aligned.
QBusiness leaders want reform but don’t want to pay for it, right?
ANo; there’s been unbelievable generosity, not just in resources but in ideas. We’ve had a great relationship with the Chamber of Commerce and Business Roundtable. I’ve met with a number of CEOs.

No Ordinary Man, This Principal Has Influenced a Legion of Educators

Jay Matthews:

When I first met him a dozen years ago, Mike Durso struck me as an okay principal. He didn’t say much about himself, but his school, Springbrook High in Silver Spring, was well-run. The students liked him. He had been around a long time, another good sign.
It took some time to realize how badly he had deceived me. His adopted persona, good ol’ boy administrator, hid something more important. I began looking for clues to how amazing Durso was, what an impact he was having on the region with his phenomenal eye for talent, while he pretended to be like everybody else, just getting through the day.

Bout with cancer gave Evers the drive to become Wisconsin schools chief

Alan Borsuk:

When the surgery was over, the worst of the aftermath survived, and the tumor gone, Tony Evers met with his oncologist, Linn Khuu.
“You know, you’ve been given a second chance,” she told him. “Go do something great.”
Evers felt a bit insulted at first. He thought he had worked hard and done good things for years. For one thing, he had been deputy state superintendent of public instruction for almost seven years at that point.
Then he decided she was right.
Now, Evers said, he would tell people who went through what he went through, “If you do get a second chance, make the most of it.”
At 11 a.m. Monday, Evers, 57, will show what he is doing to make the most of it. He will be sworn in as Wisconsin’s 26th superintendent of public instruction – and almost surely the first without an esophagus.
Within months of being told he had a form of cancer that generally has low survival rates, Evers decided to undertake a race for statewide office.
“Once you get over a hurdle, it does make you a bit more fearless,” he said in an interview last week.

A Union Promotion
An enemy of education reform gets kicked upstairs.

Wall Street Journal Editorial:

In her weekly “What Matters Most” newspaper column, Randi Weingarten recently bid the Big Apple farewell. Ms. Weingarten has been elevated to president of the national American Federation of Teachers from head of its New York City affiliate, and she had some notable parting words: “One of the most rewarding (and exhausting) things about working in public education in New York City is that it is the best laboratory in the world for trying new things.”
Well, it could be, if it weren’t for Ms. Weingarten’s union. Since taking over in 1998, she has done everything she could to block significant reforms to New York’s public schools. Take her opposition to charter schools. She resisted raising the state cap on charters from 100 unless the union could organize them. (She lost and the cap now is 200.)

Wisconsin’s New K-12 Academic Standards

Alan Borsuk:

Wisconsin education officials are aiming to move into the national mainstream by setting firmer standards for what children should learn in school and finding better ways to measure achievement.
A new report from the American Diploma Project praises Wisconsin’s proposed new set of standards for high school English and math. The report is the latest of several indications that changes are being made when it comes to student expectations – and that others are noticing.
Wisconsin built a reputation in recent years for having loosely written state standards. The state was viewed as setting the bar about as low as anywhere in the country in determining if students were proficient, and taking too rosy an approach to deciding whether schools were getting adequate results.
Several national groups, some of them with conservative orientations but others harder to peg politically, criticized the state for its softness.
The report from the Diploma Project, issued last week, says that in revising its statement of what students are expected to learn in English and math, “Wisconsin has taken an important step to better prepare young people for success in post-secondary education and in their careers.”

Much more on the WKCE here.

Peer Pressure

Will Fitzhugh
The Concord Review
6 July 2009
We make frequent use of the influence of their high school peers on many of our students. We have peer counseling programs and even peer discipline systems, in some cases. We show students the artistic abilities of their peers in exhibitions, concerts, plays, recitals, and the like.
Most obviously, we put before our high school students the athletic skills and performances of their peers in a very wide range of meets, matches, and games, some of which, of course, are better attended than others.
While some high schools still have just one valedictorian, fellow students have little or no idea what sort of academic work the student who is first in her class has done. Academic scholarships may be announced, but it is quite impossible for peers to see the academic work for which the scholarship has been awarded. Here again, the contrast with athletics is clear.
We show high school students the artistic, athletic, and other examples of the outstanding efforts and accomplishments of their peers without seeming to worry that such examples will send their peers into unmanageable depressions or cause them to give up their own efforts to do their best.
When it comes to academic achievements, on the other hand, we do seem to worry that they will have a harmful effect if they are shown to other students. I am not quite sure how that attitude got its hold on us, but I do have some comments from authors whose papers I have published, on their reaction to seeing the exemplary academic work of their peers:
“When a former history teacher first lent me a copy of The Concord Review, I was inspired by the careful scholarship crafted by other young people. Although I have always loved history passionately, I was used to writing history papers that were essentially glorified book reports…As I began to research the Ladies’ Land League, I looked to The Concord Review for guidance on how to approach my task…In short, I would like to thank you not only for publishing my essay, but for motivating me to develop a deeper understanding of history. I hope that The Concord Review will continue to fascinate, challenge and inspire young historians for years to come.”
North Central High School (IN) Class of 2005
“The opportunity that The Concord Review presented drove me to rewrite and revise my paper to emulate its high standards. Your journal truly provides an extraordinary opportunity and positive motivation for high school students to undertake extensive research and academic writing, experiences that ease the transition from high school to college.”
Thomas Worthington High School (OH) Class of 2008
“Thank you for selecting my essay regarding Augustus Caesar and his rule of the Roman Republic for publication in the Spring 2009 issue of The Concord Review. I am both delighted and honored to know that this essay will be of some use to readers around the world. The process of researching and writing this paper for my IB Diploma was truly enjoyable and it is my hope that it will inspire other students to undertake their own research projects on historical topics.”
Old Scona Academic High School, Edmonton, Alberta, (Canada) Class of 2008
“In the end, working on that history paper, inspired by the high standard set by The Concord Review, reinvigorated my interest not only in history, but also in writing, reading and the rest of the humanities. I am now more confident in my writing ability, and I do not shy from difficult academic challenges. My academic and intellectual life was truly altered by my experience with that paper, and the Review played no small role! Without the Review, I would not have put so much work into the paper. I would not have had the heart to revise so thoroughly.”
Isidore Newman School (LA) Class of 2003
“At CRLHS, a much-beloved history teacher suggested to me that I consider writing for The Concord Review, a publication that I had previously heard of, but knew little about. He proposed, and I agreed, that it would be an opportunity for me to pursue more independent work, something that I longed for, and hone my writing and research skills in a project of considerably broader scope than anything I had undertaken up to that point.”
Cambridge Rindge and Latin High School (MA) Class of 2003
Now, whenever a counterintuitive result–like this enthusiasm for a challenge–is found, there is always an attempt to limit the damage to our preconceptions. “This is only a tiny fringe group (of trouble-makers, nerds, etc.)” or “most of our high school students would not respond with interest to the exemplary academic work of their peers.” The problem with those arguments is that we really don’t know enough. We haven’t actually tried to see what would happen if we presented our high school students with good academic work done by their more diligent peers. Perhaps we should consider giving that experiment a serious try. I have, as it happens, some good high school academic work to use as examples in such a trial…

Milwaukee School District Spending Online

http://mpsspending.milwaukee.k12.wi.us

Via Alan Borsuk:

When a citizen taxpayer group, the CRG Network, posted online a database of all invoices paid by Milwaukee Public Schools a few months ago, it brought some amount of criticism of specific items – how much had been spent on food for meetings and parent events, on iPods for student prizes and so on.
But it also led some MPS officials, such as finance chief Michelle Nate, to say the system ought to post the data itself since it’s all public information.
Now MPS has done that.

A great idea.

What it’s Like to Teach Black Students

Marty Nemko:

Despite almost 50 years of large and accelerating efforts to improve the school achievement of African-American students, the gap between their achievement and that of whites and Asians remains about as large as ever.
Yet proposals for what to do about it seem basically unchanged: Spend more money and divert existing money to reduce class size and train teachers better, have more students take a rigorous college prep curriculum, work on improving self-esteem, eliminate ability-grouped classes, use cooperative-learning techniques, and reassign top teachers to schools with a high percentage of African-American students.
I have become especially doubtful about whether those approaches will work better in the future than they have in the past when I read this report from the trenches. Usually, we hear only from politicians and education leaders (who also are politicians) spouting lofty rhetoric. Occasionally, we hear of a promising program, but which never turns out to be scalable. Or we see a Hollywood movie about some amazing teacher.
We rarely, however, hear from a more typical teacher who, day to day, teaches low-achieving African-American kids. So it was with interest that I read this truly depressing account from a teacher. I’ve edited out a couple of unnecessarily snarky sentences, which are irrelevant to the issue. Nonetheless the essay is long yet, I believe, worth your time.)

Md. School Joins Test of Online Courses Tailored to Girls

Michael Birnbaum:

When the Online School for Girls flickers to life this fall on computer screens across the country, students will take part in an unusual experiment that joins two trends: girls-only schooling and online teaching.
A consortium that includes the 108-year-old Holton-Arms School in Bethesda is driving the project, in the belief that girls can benefit from an Internet curriculum tailored just to them.
“There’s been a lot of research done on how girls learn differently with technology than boys,” said Brad Rathgeber, Holton-Arms’s director of technology. “Part of this is a little bit of theory that we’re trying to put in practice to see if it really does play out.”
For now, the online collaboration will allow the four participating schools — Holton-Arms, Harpeth Hall in Nashville, Westover School in Middlebury, Conn., and Laurel School in Shaker Heights, Ohio — to offer classes that would not have generated enough student interest or teacher support in any one school. When the classes open to the public a year later, the educators hope that students around the world — including homeschoolers and girls at coed schools — will be able to take part in a version of the girls’ school experience. And they want to prove that single-sex online education works. They can’t find anyone who has done anything similar.

Mayoral control isn’t the answer for Detroit schools

Andy Kroll:

On a recent visit to Cody High School in southwestern Detroit, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan reiterated one of his key talking points on how to improve the nation’s underachieving urban public school districts: Put mayors in charge of big-city public schools.
Transferring authority over urban school districts from school boards and superintendents to mayors, Duncan explained in March at the Mayors’ National Forum on Education in Washington, D.C., will ensure greater stability in the leadership of school districts. Duncan pointed out that mayors usually hold office longer than the average school superintendent.
The secretary of education also said that mayors make stronger leaders at the helm of public schools.

Jay on the Web: Can Unions and KIPP Schools Co-exist?

Jay Matthews:

Mike Klonsky has some strong words for Jay Mathews on his recent column about unions and charter schools. In the piece, Jay argues that union demands might swamp the progress that one Baltimore KIPP school has shown under the direction of KIPP founder Jason Botel.
In his blog Small Talk, Klonsky, an educator and activist, argues Mathews is ignoring the difficult conditions many KIPP teachers work under:

US Education Secretary Duncan Promotes Charter School Debate

Mary Bruce:

chools specialize in math, science or the arts. Some are Afro-centric, others are religious. They are publicly funded but operate independently of local schools boards and, often, teacher unions.
They all make up the growing charter school movement that the Obama administration would like to see flourish.
“The charter movement is absolutely one of the most profound changes in American education, bringing new options to underserved communities and introducing competition and innovation into the education system,” Education Secretary Arne Duncan told attendees at the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools’ annual conference last week.

Return of Board of Education means parents have less say on schools

Meredith Kolodner & Rachel Monahan:

Parents who’ve complained for years about having little input under mayoral control of schools, have even less power under the resurrected Board of Education.
They say they have been left with fewer avenues for involvement, including the loss of their Community Education Councils, which expired with mayoral control.
“We had no power when we were authorized, what power will we have now?” said Queens CEC 26 head Robert Caloras.
He plans to file a formal complaint over the appointment of a deputy mayor to represent Queens on the Board of Ed.
He said the appointment of Deputy Mayor Dennis Walcott to the seven-member board was a conflict of interest, since he works for the mayor.

Shake-up in Seattle schools coming soon

Danny Westneat via a kind reader’s email:

Maybe it was brought on by lean times. Or maybe long-simmering angst about the state of Seattle schools is finally boiling over on its own.
But the decision this month to lay off 165 of Seattle schools’ newest teachers in a “last hired, first fired” manner has got some of liberal Seattle suddenly sounding more like a conservative red state.
More than 600 school parents have signed an online petition, at supportgreatteachers.com, that calls out the teachers union for causing “great distress and upheaval” in the schools. At issue is the policy of choosing who gets laid off solely by seniority.
“Wake up and see how union refusal to consider merit is damaging the profession and our kids,” wrote one parent.
“We want the best teachers, not the oldest, teaching our kids,” wrote another.
“Teacher unions are an anachronism,” said another.
The organizers of the petition are a group of parents called Community and Parents for Public Schools. They agree what they’re doing is very un-Seattle.

A parent’s plea on teaching

Michael Laser, via a kind reader’s email:

IF I could change public education, here’s what I’d do first: reward the best teachers with higher pay and stature, and fire the worst teachers, because they shouldn’t be in the classroom.
My children have gone through a total of 16 years of public schooling in New Jersey. Over the years, I’ve seen outstanding teachers, and outstandingly bad ones. Our kids have had teachers who introduced them to everything under the sun, and made every day different and fascinating. Some of our daughter’s teachers gave up their lunch and stayed late to help her find her way through the maze of math. Two of our son’s teachers comforted him when traumatic events laid him low. My daughter’s sixth-grade teacher made students feel like real scientists; her language arts teacher covered everyone’s papers with useful suggestions. These people put everything they have into teaching. They light sparks that stay lit for years.
But we’ve also seen teachers who put dents in our children’s spirits, day after day, teachers who barely taught anything at all, who, I suspect, chose the profession because they wanted summers off.
My father used to come home from his post office job railing about co-workers who didn’t do their share of the work, but couldn’t be fired. Watching bad teachers fail to do their jobs, I’m even angrier than he was. How can anyone justify protecting the jobs of teachers who:

Seniority vs. Effectiveness

Seattle: Support Great Teachers:

As a Seattle community, we can and must speak up to improve the effectiveness of every school, in every neighborhood.
We, the undersigned, ask our leaders to do the following:
1. Delay the immediate assignment of replacement teachers until the effects of attrition and retirement are understood. Keep successful teams intact.
2. In the new contract between the teachers’ association and the school district, change the layoff policy to prioritize effectiveness. Put in place a system that promotes, rewards and protects teamwork, expertise, best teaching practices and each site’s unique programmatic needs.
3. Ensure that all kids have consistent access to highly effective teachers.
4. Give our principals the tools they need to support and retain effective teachers within their individual schools.

L.A. school board lets Birmingham High go charter

Mitchell Landsberg:

A newly constituted Los Angeles school board took its first action Wednesday by giving up control of its largest campus, allowing Birmingham High to convert itself into a charter.
The action, which took place after Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa called for a “revolution” in city schools, followed months of bitter infighting at the school in the Lake Balboa section of the San Fernando Valley, and was a blow to teachers union leaders and others who had advocated the simultaneous creation of a union-sponsored school on the Birmingham campus. The charter will begin its first school year Aug. 19.
New board members Steve Zimmer and Nury Martinez admitted being unprepared to vote on the issue, which stirred deep passions among teachers, parents and students. Zimmer said he felt as though he were “on my Star Trek maiden voyage,” and Martinez complained that she had been briefed about the months-long saga only the day before. Zimmer ultimately abstained, while Martinez joined four other board members in voting for the charter.
Trustee Marguerite Poindexter LaMotte dissented, saying she supported the concept but wanted more time to heal the wounds on the campus and prepare plans for the union-backed school.

US Education Secretary Duncan Advocates Merit Pay at NEA

Stephen Sawchuck:

To answer the question I’m sure you all have: Yes. Teachers booed and hissed during some of the performance-pay portions of Secretary of Education Arne Duncan’s speech. And they weren’t overwhelmingly happy with the talk of reform to seniority and tenure systems, either.
But some of the stories I’ve seen around the Web on the speech are billing this as “tough love” for the teachers’ unions. There was some of that, sure, but President Barack Obama and Duncan clearly telegraphed their intentions to push hard on these issues in the stimulus legislation, and that passed months ago.
So there was an element to this whole proceeding that came off as a little bit rehearsed to me. I wonder if Duncan had prepared his seemingly ad-libbed line for when the booing started: “You can boo; just don’t throw any shoes, please.” And I’m pretty sure most of the delegates had gotten their vocal chords ready, too.
To me, the biggest news out of the speech is that the administration is increasingly emphasizing student achievement as one measure of teacher pay or evaluation, although not the only measure. That is a big issue, and it’s one that helped sink congressional attempts to renew the No Child Left Behind Act in 2007.

Joanne has more along with Thomas.
Libby Quaid:

Education Secretary Arne Duncan challenged members of the National Education Association Thursday to stop resisting the idea of linking teacher pay to student achievement.
It was Duncan’s first speech at the union’s annual meeting, a gathering at which President Barack Obama was booed when he mentioned the idea of performance pay last year. By contrast, Duncan drew raucous applause and only a smattering of boos.
“I came here today to challenge you to think differently about the role of unions in public education,” Duncan told the 3.2 million-member union in San Diego.
“It’s not enough to focus only on issues like job security, tenure, compensation, and evaluation,” he said. “You must become full partners and leaders in education reform. You must be willing to change.”

Barb Thompson takes Montgomery (AL) Superintendent Post

Adrienne Nettles via a kind reader’s email:

In a vote preceded by outbursts from board members, the Montgomery County Board of Education on Wednesday selected Barbara Thompson as Montgomery’s new superintendent.

The board voted 4-3 along racial lines to offer the job to Thompson, who currently serves as superintendent of New Glarus Public Schools in Wisconsin.

Black board members Mary Briers, Eleanor Dawkins, Robert Porterfield and Beverly Ross voted for Thompson. Voting against her were white members Charlotte Meadows, Heather Sellers and Melissa Snowden, who all wanted to continue the search process.

Thompson was the lone finalist for the job after Samantha Ingram, superintendent of Fairfield County Schools in South Carolina, withdrew on Monday.

Ross, chairwoman of the school board, said she called Thompson shortly after the vote and Thompson accepted the job.

“I am excited that she’s excited about coming here,” Ross said. “She was already talking about how to get our test scores up.”

Thompson, in a phone interview from her house in Wisconsin, said she and the board in the next few days should begin working out the details of her contract, which include salary negotiations.

Thompson was formerly principal at Lapham Elementary in the Madison School District. The Montgromery School District, with 31,000 students, is nearly 1/3 larger than the Madison Schools.

Education in America and Britain: Learning Lessons from Private Schools

The Economist:

The right and wrong ways to get more poor youngsters into the world’s great universities
LOTS of rich people and crummy state schools, especially in the big cities where well-off folk tend to live: these common features of America and Britain help explain the prominence in both countries of an elite tier of private schools. Mostly old, some with fat endowments, places like Eton, Harrow and Phillips Exeter have done extraordinarily well. Fees at independent schools have doubled in real terms over the past 25 years and waiting lists have lengthened. Even in the recession, they are proving surprisingly resilient (see article). A few parents are pulling out, but most are soldiering on and plenty more are clamouring to get their children in.
Row, row together
All sorts of class-based conspiracy theories exist to explain the success of such institutions, but the main reason why they thrive in a more meritocratic world is something much more pragmatic: their ability to get people into elite universities. For Britain and America also have the world’s best universities. Look at any of the global rankings and not only do the Ivy League and Oxbridge monopolise the top of the tree, British and (especially) American colleges dominate most of the leading 100 places. This summer graduates will struggle to find jobs, so a degree from a world-famous name like Berkeley or the London School of Economics will be even more valuable than usual. The main asset of the private schools is their reputation for getting children into those good universities.

Massachusetts Teachers Union Votes Down Advanced Placement Grant

Mike Antonucci:

Today’s lesson comes courtesy of Bernadette Marso, president of the Leominster Education Association in Massachusetts. Her members just voted down, by a 305-47 margin, a five-year, $856,000 grant from the Advanced Placement Training and Award Program. The program, among other things, pays teachers of Advanced Placement courses bonus money “if they successfully recruit more students to take AP courses and if the students perform well on the end-of-the-year AP exam.”

Some district officials and parents complained about the union decision because the bonuses were just one part of the program, which includes professional development and a subsidy to offset the AP exam fee for the students. But the union stood firmly opposed.

“We understand that some people will not understand the vote, but we confronted this from a union perspective,” Marso said. “We have a fair and equitable contract with the district, and to have a third party come in and start paying certain teachers more money than other hard-working teachers goes against what a union is all about.”

It will be interesting to see how the Madison School District’s contract negotiations play out with respect to community 4K partners and other curriculuar issues.

Tony Evers Evokes Change as He Enters Wisconsin DPI Superintendent Office

WisPolitics:

“Education is all about continued improvement, and the status quo is not satisfactory,” Evers told the audience at a WisPolitics.com luncheon Tuesday at the Madison Club.

In addition to guiding local schools as they navigate state cuts and an influx of federal stimulus funding, Evers is promoting a single federal test and an overhaul of accountability and assessment standards for public education. Under the new system, which Evers said would be formed quickly over the next few months, the state will be able to consistently measure other educational categories aside from test scores.

The test score measurement mandates under the federal No Child Left Behind law drew criticism from Evers for their incomplete picture of education, but he said the federal standard has done educators “a tremendous favor” by showing disparities between performance of white and non-white students.

He also called for a national standard of testing and curriculum, which he said 46 states had backed. He said that Wisconsin isn’t able to truly compare its educational growth to other districts and states because 50 different tests are being administered annually. He also called the current system “economically irrational.”
“Public education, even though it’s a state responsibility, is a national endeavor, and we have to view it as such,” Evers said. “By doing this, we’re going to make our system more transparent.”

Perhaps nothing will test the new state accountability system as much as Milwaukee. Evers went to great lengths to discuss the “magic” that teachers work with many less fortunate students in the state’s largest school district, but recognized a graduation rate that, despite increasing to about 70 percent, lags well behind the state average.

Reroute The Pre-K Debate!

Andy Rotherham:

It just can’t be a very good sign that when someone raises serious questions about one of the liveliest and controversial issues in our field those questions are ignored or distorted and caricatured. I’ve heard Checker Finn’s new book on pre-kindergarten education referred to as an anti-pre-k book (it’s not), an intemperate attack on the pre-k movement (it’s critical, sure, but let’s assume they’re not as vulnerable as the kids they serve), or dismissed as simply too conservative to be taken seriously by the field (again it’s not).
That doesn’t mean it’s a flawless book. Sara Mead has engaged with it and points out some problems with the analysis (in particular Finn overstates current participation levels – especially from a quality standpoint – and that’s no small thing given his underlying point) and she also rounds up the other writing on it. But in general there hasn’t been a lot of discussion of Reroute the Preschool Juggernaut’s points about current program coordination, costs and how to think about costs, quality, and universality. These are not small matters; they cut to the heart of what is likely to be a massive public investment in an important strategy to improve outcomes for economically disadvantaged youngsters.

$10 million for new science books as state adds exam

Jane Roberts:

Teaching science in a school district that for years paid little attention to it will cost $10 million for textbooks alone over the next six years.
The city school board approved the expense Monday night, and also OK’d $2.1 million for more print and Web-based reading materials for students in pre-K through third grade.
Half of the district’s students are held back at least one year by the time they are in third grade because they cannot read well enough.
The effects, district officials say, show up in low graduation rates and high dropout and incarceration rates, costing the city millions a year in lost productivity alone and millions more in prison and jail costs.
Since the federal No Child Left Behind mandate was passed in 2002, science has gotten short shrift here because it is not one of the subjects covered under the state exams. Instead, teachers have focused on math and reading, often doubling up class periods to give students a bigger dose of what they must know to pass.

Wisconsin School funding getting precarious Budget removes option for districts to cap increases for teachers’ salaries, benefits

Alan Borsuk & Amy Hetzner:

The three-legged stool is now down to one leg.
Will that leave either schools or taxpayers wobbly? Will the last leg fall, too?
In any case, Wisconsin’s old order for how to fund schools is coming to an end, and what comes next remains to be decided, perhaps two years from now when the next state budget is adopted. Pressure for an overhaul is growing, even as economic realities are providing strong pressure to hold down budgets.
When Gov. Jim Doyle signed the state budget for 2009-’11 on Monday, the leg of the stool known as the qualified economic offer fell away. The QEO meant school districts had the option of capping increases in teachers’ pay and benefits to 3.8% a year.
A second leg – the state’s commitment to fund two-thirds of general operations of public schools – has been weakening over the past six years. It looks as if it now will be the state’s commitment to fund something over 60% of school costs but not the full two-thirds.
That will leave only the third leg – revenue caps – in force. There will still be limits on how much school districts can collect in state aid and property taxes combined, a rule that will keep total spending growth restricted in general, but with widely varying impacts on property tax increases.
The three-legged stool was created in the mid-1990s, when Republican Tommy Thompson was governor. The goal was to put brakes on rapidly rising property taxes by increasing state aid, while holding down increases in overall spending through revenue caps and the threat of QEOs.

The Evidence on Online Education

Scott Jaschik:

Online learning has definite advantages over face-to-face instruction when it comes to teaching and learning, according to a new meta-analysis released Friday by the U.S. Department of Education.
The study found that students who took all or part of their instruction online performed better, on average, than those taking the same course through face-to-face instruction. Further, those who took “blended” courses — those that combine elements of online learning and face-to-face instruction — appeared to do best of all. That finding could be significant as many colleges report that blended instruction is among the fastest-growing types of enrollment.
The Education Department examined all kinds of instruction, and found that the number of valid analyses of elementary and secondary education was too small to have much confidence in the results. But the positive results appeared consistent (and statistically significant) for all types of higher education, undergraduate and graduate, across a range of disciplines, the study said.
A meta-analysis is one that takes all of the existing studies and looks at them for patterns and conclusions that can be drawn from the accumulation of evidence.

The exit exam debate

Larry Aceves:

The proposal to scrap the exam has been called “controversial” because it has divided education leaders from their usual allies in the Legislature.
While Assembly Speaker Karen Bass and Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg say it’s not fair to ask our students to risk giving up their diplomas as a result of state budget cuts, many education leaders fear dismantling a centerpiece of California’s educational accountability system that was finally implemented just three years ago after years of delay.
But the debate over the exam, a budget line item that represents less than one-third of 0.001 of a percent of the budget shortfall, distracts from the more important “test” by which the state budget should be judged: the effect it will have on our children and on California’s future. By just about any measure, the budget on the table in Sacramento now receives a failing grade.

Roberts: Supreme Court not setting school rules

Sue Lindsey:

Don’t look to the Supreme Court to set school rules, only to clarify them when officials have abdicated that responsibility, Chief Justice John Roberts said Saturday.
At a judicial conference, Roberts was asked how school administrators should interpret seemingly conflicting messages from the court in two recent decisions, including one Thursday that said Arizona officials conducted an unconstitutional strip-search of a teenage girl. In 2007, the justices sided with an Alaska high school principal, ruling that administrators could restrict student speech if it appears to advocate illegal drug use.
Roberts told the audience there was no conflict in the court’s rulings, just clarity intended to deal with narrow issues that surface from government actions.
“You can’t expect to get a whole list of regulations from the Supreme Court. That would be bad,” Roberts said. “We wouldn’t do a good job at it.”

Critical Likability

Will Fitzhugh
The Concord Review
28 June 2009
As we approach the end of the first decade of the first century of the third millennium of the Christian Era, the corporate members of the new and influential Partnership for 21st Century Skills have begun to look beyond and behind and beneath their earlier commitment to the education of our students in critical thinking, collaborative problem solving, and global awareness.
It has become obvious to industry leaders that more fundamental than all these new student skills for success in the business world is really Critical Likability. While it may be useful for new employees to know that the world is round, and that solving problems is sometimes easier if others provide help, and that real thinking is superior to not thinking at all, these all pale in importance to whether other people like you or not.
Being a great communicator is important, and reading and writing have received some support from the 21st Century leaders, but those are not of much value if no one likes you and no one wants to hear what you have to say, whether oral or written.
Critical Likability, it must be understood, goes far beyond mere popularity in school, although they share some essential tools and characteristics. Future employees must learn, while they are in school, the basic lessons of smiling, personal hygiene (including the control of bad breath and the release of hydrogen sulfide gas), grooming, table manners, the correct handshake, and at least the basics of dressing for success.
At a more advanced level students should be taught to listen, empathize, seem to agree, laugh, hug (only where clearly appropriate), tell jokes, drink (where and when culturally appropriate), play a social sport (like golf), and generally to be likable in the most efficient and effective senses of that word.

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Note to Union: Don’t Mess With Success at This High-Achieving Charter Middle School

Jay Matthews:

Sometime last year, while negotiating a teacher contract for the KIPP Ujima Village charter middle school in Baltimore, founder Jason Botel pointed out that his students, mostly from low- income families, had earned the city’s highest public school test scores three years in a row. If the union insisted on increasing overtime pay, he said, the school could not afford the extra instruction time that was a key to its success, and student achievement would suffer.
Botel says a union official replied: “That’s not our problem.”
Such stories heat the blood of union critics. It is, they contend, a sign of how unions dumb down public education by focusing on salaries, not learning.
Baltimore Teachers Union President Marietta English, who was at the meeting, denied Botel’s account. But, she added, teacher salaries and working conditions are her priority as a negotiator. I think the union leader is right.

“It’s sort of peaceful knowing that you’re going to work to do nothing” $65 million a year for New York City’s Rubber Room

News: Associated Press
700 NYC teachers are paid to do nothing
By KAREN MATTHEWS–3 days ago (23 June 2009)
NEW YORK (AP) — Hundreds of New York City public school teachers accused of offenses ranging from insubordination to sexual misconduct are being paid their full salaries to sit around all day playing Scrabble, surfing the Internet or just staring at the wall, if that’s what they want to do.
Because their union contract makes it extremely difficult to fire them, the teachers have been banished by the school system to its “rubber rooms“–off-campus office space where they wait months, even years, for their disciplinary hearings.
The 700 or so teachers can practice yoga, work on their novels, paint portraits of their colleagues –pretty much anything but school work. They have summer vacation just like their classroom colleagues and enjoy weekends and holidays through the school year.
“You just basically sit there for eight hours,” said Orlando Ramos, who spent seven months in a rubber room, officially known as a temporary reassignment center, in 2004-2005. “I saw several near-fights. ‘This is my seat.’ ‘I’ve been sitting here for six months.’ That sort of thing.”
Ramos was an assistant principal in East Harlem when he was accused of lying at a hearing on whether to suspend a student. Ramos denied the allegation but quit before his case was resolved and took a job in California.
Because the teachers collect their full salaries of $70,000 or more, the city Department of Education estimates the practice costs the taxpayers $65 million a year. The department blames union rules.
“It is extremely difficult to fire a tenured teacher because of the protections afforded to them in their contract,” spokeswoman Ann Forte said.
City officials said that they make teachers report to a rubber room instead of sending they home because the union contract requires that they be allowed to continue in their jobs in some fashion while their cases are being heard. The contract does not permit them to be given other work.
Ron Davis, a spokesman for the United Federation of Teachers, said the union and the Department of Education reached an agreement last year to try to reduce the amount of time educators spend in reassignment centers, but progress has been slow.
“No one wants teachers who don’t belong in the classroom. However, we cannot neglect the teachers’ rights to due process,” Davis said. The union represents more than 228,000 employees, including nearly 90,000 teachers.
Many teachers say they are being punished because they ran afoul of a vindictive boss or because they blew the whistle when somebody fudged test scores.
“The principal wants you out, you’re gone,” said Michael Thomas, a high school math teacher who has been in a reassignment center for 14 months after accusing an assistant principal of tinkering with test results.
City education officials deny teachers are unfairly targeted but say there has been an effort under Mayor Michael Bloomberg to get incompetents out of the classroom. “There’s been a push to report anything that you see wrong,” Forte said.
Some other school systems likewise pay teachers to do nothing.

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Can Charter-School Execs Help Failing Public Schools?

Gilbert Cruz:

In the late ’90s, software entrepreneur John Zitzner was pretty close to being bankrupt. Yet within six months — in one of those typical “holy crap” dotcom-era stories — Zitzner had sold his company and become “a very modest millionaire.” Fantastic. And in one of those typical “What do I do with all this money?” stories, he decided to help make the world a better place — specifically by co-founding a charter school in Cleveland. (Read TIME’s report: “How to Raise the Standard in America’s Schools.”)
That was three summers ago. Fast-forward to last Monday, when Zitzner was in the audience in Washington as Secretary of Education Arne Duncan appealed to a gathering of charter-school operators to “adapt your educational model to turning around our lowest-performing schools.” For months now, Duncan has talked about closing 5,000 — or about 5% — of the nation’s lowest-performing public schools. By throwing down the gauntlet to charter schools, Duncan is challenging an industry that has become very proficient at opening up brand-new schools, but has very little experience in going into a preexisting school and turning those kids from low performers into high-quality students. But Zitzner, whose Entrepreneurship Preparatory has about 200 students in grades 6 to 8, can’t wait to dive in. In the past three years his students have gone from fairly abysmal test results to scoring in the top quartile on the Ohio standardized test, and he doesn’t see why that model can’t be replicated among other underperforming students. “Charter-school people are entrepreneurs — we like challenges, and this industry needs people who can make order out of chaos.”

Charter Schools Win a High-Profile Convert: Boston Mayor

Jon Keller:

Tom Menino, the longtime Democratic mayor of this city, is not known for rocking the boat or for eloquence. But earlier this month he stunned many in the city when he gave a powerful speech about school reform.
The speech took aim at the lack of progress in dozens of low-performing, inner-city Boston public schools, many of which have not met adequate yearly progress for five years running.
“To get the results we seek — at the speed we want — we must make transformative changes that boost achievement for students, improve quality choices for parents, and increase opportunities for teachers,” Mr. Menino said. “We need to empower our educators to quickly innovate and implement what works.” With that, Mr. Menino abandoned nearly two decades of personal opposition to nonunion charter schools, which have been bitterly resisted by Massachusetts teachers unions and their political allies. “I believe that the increased flexibility that charters provide can . . . help us close the achievement gap,” he declared.

Moderate Senate Democrats Embrace Education Reform

Washington–Ten moderate Senate Democrats today sent a letter to President Barack Obama voicing support for his key education goals and pledging to “lend our voices to the debate as proponents of education reform.”
The letter was initiated by Senators Evan Bayh (D-IN), Tom Carper (D-DE), and Blanche Lincoln (D-AR), leaders of the Senate Moderate Dems Working Group, and signed by seven of their moderate colleagues.
“As legislators, we believe we must embrace promising new approaches to education policy if we are to prepare our children to fill the jobs of the future,” they wrote to President Obama. “By 2016, four out of every 10 new American jobs will require at least some advanced education or training. To retain our global economic leadership, we share your sense of urgency in moving an education reform agenda through Congress.”
Saying that “now is the time to explore new paths and reject stale thinking,” the moderate Democrats commended President Obama for his focus on teacher quality and noted a recent report by McKinsey and Company that highlights the achievement gaps that persist among various economic, regional and racial backgrounds in the United States and the gaps between American students and their peers in other industrialized nations. Based on this report, the senators noted that “had the United States closed the gap in education achievement with better-performing nations like Finland, Iceland, and Poland, our GDP could have been up to $2.3 trillion higher last year.”
The senators expressed support for new pay-for-performance teacher incentives and expansions of effective public charter schools. They also endorsed the Obama administration’s desire to extend student learning time to stay globally competitive and called for investments in state-of-the-art data systems so school systems can track student performance across grades, schools, towns and teachers.
Other signatories on the letter include Senators Mary Landrieu (D-LA), Michael Bennet (D-CO), Joseph Lieberman (ID-CT), Bill Nelson (D-FL), Claire McCaskill (D-MO), Mark Warner (D-VA) and Herb Kohl (D-WI).

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Editorial: Save these charters

The Providence Journal:

The Rhode Island House Finance Committee budget unveiled last week slashed $1.5 million for two new charter schools in Central Falls and Cumberland, both of which would serve minority students.
This is a tough year, and cuts must be made. But slashing these funds — a tiny part of a proposed $7.76 billion budget — makes little sense, given that freezing out charter schools would put in jeopardy federal aid under the Race to the Top Program, a $5 billion Washington initiative that rewards innovation in education. Education Secretary Arne Duncan said on Monday that Rhode Island may be putting itself at “at a huge competitive disadvantage” for the money.
Innovation in education may be why the two charters, the Mayoral Academy and the Segue Institute for Learning, were spurned. Teachers unions testified against the proposed Mayoral Academy for fear that it would threaten their economic interests, since the school would be permitted to hire and fire teachers without union red tape. A similar school in Harlem has done wonders in helping minority students achieve at a level comparable with students in excellent suburban schools.

SIS Interview: University of Wisconsin Education Professor Adam Gamoran

Dr. Adam Gamoran (Dr. Gamoran’s website; Clusty search) has been involved with a variety Madison School District issues, including controversial mandatory academic grouping changes (English 10, among others).
I had an opportunity to briefly visit with Dr. Gamoran during the District’s Strategic Planning Process. He kindly agreed to spend some time recently discussing these and other issues (22K PDF discussion topics, one of which – outbound open enrollment growth – he was unfamiliar with).
Click here to download the 298MB .m4v (iTunes, iPhone, iPod) video file, or a 18MB audio file. A transcript is available here.

Is AP the Only Way to Challenge Students?

Jay Matthews:

Every year, Jay Mathews compiles The Challenge Index, a ranking of schools based on a simple formula – the number of AP, IB, and other college-level tests given out at any given high school divided by the total number of graduating seniors from that school year. The index is not meant to be comprehensive but to give parents, teachers, and students an idea of how much a high school challenges its students.
This week, the blog Schools Matter featured an essay by user teacherken calling foul on Jay’s index. Teacherken, who says he is a high school AP U.S. Government and Politics teacher and actually graded AP tests this year, makes a case against The Challenge Index, arguing that schools challenge students in many more ways than just through AP and IB tests:

If students actually write the essay, they’ll get extra credit.

Howard Blume:

To make classes more manageable, administrators have enrolled some especially challenging students in Locke 4, an academy whose Opportunities program consists of three classrooms set aside for students who are doing poorly or displaying serious behavior problems. The program also accepts students returning after being convicted of crimes.
On a recent Monday, 14 students sat in an Opportunities class with one teacher and an aide — Green Dot wanted especially small adult-to-student ratios for these youths. The posted class rules were simple: Stay seated during class; complete all of your work; be polite and respectful.
These expectations failed to achieve traction with several students, including a recently arriving freshman.
“Do you need help?” the teacher asked him.
“You need help,” he retorted, looking around for admiration from his peers. “You know, lady, I don’t like you.”
The group was assigned to organize an essay on juvenile justice after reviewing case studies of four young offenders. If students actually write the essay, they’ll get extra credit.
One table over from the ninth-grader, a wiry boy with slicked-back hair said he had landed in Locke 4 after punching a school security guard. He considers gang membership necessary to survive: “That’s almost part of life.”
Then he paused and offered something close to an endorsement of the new Locke: “Other schools, you have your enemies all the time. In this school everybody gets along. People talk to Bloods and Crips.”

Jerry Pournelle has more.

Evanston Township High School Board Stresses Rigor in School Improvement Plan

This is an interesting read (688K PDF).

RACE AND ACHIEVEMENT
Rigor Recommendation: Develop a clear, consistent operational/working definition of rigor to be used at ETHS.
Supporting Detail:

Communicate the definition of rigor to all ETHS stakeholders. (Means of communication to include, e.g., ETHS website/newsletters and displaying definition of rigor in every classroom and in other locations.)
Ensure a common understanding of rigor by other means, including providing opportunities for all ETHS stakeholders to discuss and better understand the meaning of rigor and what it entails in different ETHS departments, the different expectations associated with rigor by different ETHS stakeholders, and the varying responsibilities of ETHS stakeholders to ensure that rigor is experience by students.
Identify the components of a rigorous classroom and provide illustrations thereof for each ETHS department, including curriculum/assignments, instructional techniques, behavioral expectations, and classroom dynamics/interaction.
Ensure that rigor is provided and experienced in ETHS classrooms by means of classroom observations conducted by outside experts andlor by other appropriate means.
Create and utilize diagnostics to monitor/assess the extent to which rigor actually is being provided at ETHS, to enable teachers to improve the rigor of their classes, and to identify areas where other improvement(s) may be needed. Such diagnostics should include, e. g., assessments that teachers can use in their classrooms to evaluate students’ experience of rigor and other questionnaires to be completed by students.

Who Are We as Americans?

Nat Hentoff:

resident Obama, in his May 21 speech at the National Archives Museum in Washington said that “we can defeat Al Qaeda …if we stay true to who we are…anchored in our timeless ideals.” A much more somber note, however, was in a warning by retiring Supreme Court Justice David Souter the day before at Georgetown University Law Center.
Deeply concerned at how little knowledge Americans have of how this republic works, Justice Souter cited as an example that the majorities of the public can’t name — according to surveys — the three branches of government.
Who we are, Souter continued, “can be lost, it is being lost, it is lost, if it is not understood.” What is needed, he said, “is the restoration of the self-identity of the American people. … When I was a kid in the eighth and ninth grades, everybody took civics. That’s no longer true. (Former Justice) Sandra Day O’Connor says 50 percent of schools teach neither history nor civics.” Justice Souter continued that when he was in school, “civics was as dull as dishwater, but we knew the structure of government.”
This alert to the citizenry was almost entirely ignored by the press.
Admirably, O’Connor is trying to engage students in learning who they are as Americans through her Web site: Our Courts – 21st Century Civics (www.ourcourts.org). The site asks students what part of government they would most want to be a part of. And she invites teachers to click and “find lesson plans that fit your classroom needs.”

I complete agree with Hentoff. These words are particularly relevant when elected officials, such as Democrat Charles Schumer advocate biometric ID cards for all workers:

“I’m sure the civil libertarians will object to some kind of biometric card — although . . . there’ll be all kinds of protections — but we’re going to have to do it. It’s the only way,” Schumer said. “The American people will never accept immigration reform unless they truly believe their government is committed to ending future illegal immigration.”

The Obama Administration is advocating easy sharing of IRS data… (not good).

Wisconsin State K-12 Budget: “Robin Hood” for Madison Schools?

Steven Walters:

School-aid shift: Democrats added a shift in school-aid funding that would guarantee that no district loses more than 10% of state aid. The shift would give the Madison School District up to $1.8 million more, and take about that much from five Milwaukee-area suburban districts – Elmbrook, Oconomowoc, Mequon-Thiensville, Fox Point-Bayside and Nicolet.
QEO: The committee adopted a Senate-backed plan for an immediate repeal of the qualified economic offer system of limiting teachers’ pay raises. Doyle and the Assembly proposed a delay of the repeal until the 2010-’11 school year. Teachers have long complained that the QEO has unfairly kept salaries low; others say it keeps property taxes in check.

It will be interesting to see how the shift of money for Madison, at the expense of others plays out as state politics inevitably change…