Governance/Board Decision Making – Page 70

The Parent-Teacher Talk Gains a New Participant

For years attendance was minimal at Tefft Middle School’s annual parent-teacher conferences, but the principal did not chalk up the poor response to apathetic or dysfunctional families. Instead, she blamed what she saw as the outmoded, irrelevant way the conferences were conducted.
Roughly 60 percent of the 850 students at Tefft, in this working-class suburb some 30 miles northwest of Chicago, are from low-income families. Many are immigrants, unfamiliar or uncomfortable with the tradition of parents perched in pint-size chairs, listening intently as a teacher delivers a 15-minute soliloquy on their child’s academic progress, or lack thereof.
“Five years ago, the most important person — the student — was left out of the parent-teacher conference,” Tefft’s principal, Lavonne Smiley, said. “The old conferences were such a negative thing, so we turned it around by removing all the barriers and obstacles,” including allowing students not only to attend but also to lead the gatherings instead of anxiously awaiting their parents’ return home with the teacher’s verdict on their classroom performance.

Is Recess Necessary?

Jay Matthews:

I often spout opinions on matters about which I know nothing, so I understand when my favorite peer group — the American people — does the same. The latest example is a survey of 1,000 U.S. adults [931K PDF] by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, which specializes in public health projects, and Sports4Kids, a national nonprofit organization that supports safe and healthy playtime in low-income elementary schools.
According to the survey’s press release, “seven out of 10 Americans disagree with schools’ policies of eliminating or reducing recess time for budgetary, safety or academic reasons.” I realize most people don’t know how poisonous recess can be for urban schools with severe academic needs, but I was surprised to see the news release fail to acknowledge this. It even suggests, without qualification, that “in low-income communities” recess time “offers one of our best chances to help children develop into healthy, active adults who know how to work together and resolve conflicts.”
Few Americans have an opportunity to experience what teaching in urban schools is like. The people I know who have done so have developed a well-reasoned antipathy for the typical half-hour, go-out-and-play-but-don’t-kill-anybody recess. In my forthcoming book, “Work Hard. Be Nice,” about the Knowledge Is Power Program, I describe the classroom and playground chaos KIPP co-founders Mike Feinberg and Dave Levin encountered before starting their first KIPP fifth grade in a Houston public elementary school, the beginning of their successful program:

CRG Network Posts Milwaukee Public Schools’ Expenditures Online

Alan Borsuk:

CRG Network, the citizen organization that emerged from the recall campaign against Milwaukee County Executive Tom Ament in 2002, has come up with more than 432,000 answers to the question of how Milwaukee Public Schools spends its money.
The organization has posted a massive database with that many bills paid by MPS in 2006, 2007 and the first half of 2008.
Given that MPS is, among other things, a $1.2 billion-a-year business, there’s a lot of stuff there, ranging from payments for a few bucks to reimburse a principal for parking at a conference to six-figure amounts for contracts with University of Wisconsin researchers and millions of dollars in payments to bus companies.
Conservative talk show hosts and bloggers in recent weeks have targeted items in the database for attention, such as $16,958 in 49 invoices for Cousins Subs, many of them involving food for events involving teacher training.
Chris Kliesmet, executive administrator of CRG Network, said there have been more than 50,000 hits on the Web site with the database, some of them from foreign countries, including Iraq.

A great idea. Every school district should do this.

In College, But Only Marginally

Globe Editorial
The Boston Globe
In college, but only marginally
December 23, 2008
MUCH SOUL-SEARCHING is taking place on local college campuses after a recent study showing that college was a bust for almost two-thirds of Boston high school graduates in the class of 2000. Students attending two-year community colleges–the least-expensive option–fared the worst in the survey by the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University, with an abysmal 12 percent graduation rate.
Specific results for all public and private colleges in the study should be available shortly after Christmas. But some figures are trickling in. Roxbury Community College fell flat. Of the 101 students from the high school class of 2000 who enrolled in RCC shortly after high school, only 6 percent would go on to earn a diploma there–or anywhere else–by June 2007. Quincy College, a low-profile, two-year college on the South Shore, did comparatively well (but not good enough) by its 62 Boston students, posting a 19 percent graduation rate. Bunker Hill Community College, which drew 155 enrollees from Boston’s class of 2000, yielded a 14 percent graduation rate.
The study, which was funded by the Boston Foundation, strips away some of the hype about college attendance rates in Boston. Seven out of 10 public school graduates may get into college, but many lack the preparation to succeed. At Bunker Hill, for example, more than 80 percent of the Boston students from the class of 2000 required a remedial math course. Wisely, Bunker Hill and Boston school officials are now introducing students at some city high schools to the placement exams they will face on campus in the coming year.
The study should put an end to common claims by community college officials that their graduation rates don’t reveal much because many of their students transfer to four-year colleges before earning associate degrees. In this study, a student merely needed to earn a diploma or certificate from any institution of higher education, not just the original college. And by providing at least a six-year window, the study made allowances for students who often juggle college with work or family obligations. Rationalizations are now off the table.

(more…)

Striking Against Students Why Pennsylvania leads the nation in teacher walkouts

Wall Street Journal Editorial:

Teachers unions routinely claim that the interests of students are their top priority. So we would be interested to hear how the Pennsylvania affiliate of the National Education Association explains the proliferation of teacher walkouts in the middle of the school year.
According to a recent study by the Allegheny Institute, Pennsylvania is once again the worst state in the country for teacher strikes. No less than 42% of all teacher walkouts nationwide occur in the Keystone State, leaving kids sidelined and parents scrambling to juggle work and family, potentially on as little as 48 hours notice required by state law.
The strikes take place despite the state’s ranking in the top 20% nationwide for teacher salaries in 2006-2007 — the most recent data available — with an average of $54,970. Those paychecks go even further when adjusted for the state’s cost of living compared to top-spending school districts in places like California.

L.A.’s new arts school an expensive social experiment

Mitchell Landsberg:

The campus has long been intended as a local school, mostly serving students from surrounding neighborhoods. Critics say the district’s best resources shouldn’t be restricted geographically.
With just nine months left before it opens, a new arts high school in downtown Los Angeles still lacks a principal, a staff, a curriculum, a permanent name and a clearly articulated plan for how students will be selected — critical details for a school that aims to be one of the foremost arts education institutions in the United States.
Central High School No. 9 does have a completed campus, believed to be the second most expensive public high school ever built in the United States. But the very fact that it offers what may be the finest such facilities in the region has fueled a debate over the district’s plan to operate it primarily as a neighborhood school, with fewer than one-quarter of its slots allotted to students citywide.

Should voters pick School Board representatives?

Doug Hissom:

Milwaukee Ald. Bob Donovan apparently doesn’t have room for democracy, at least when it comes to the Milwaukee School Board.
Donovan wants an appointed School Board as opposed to letting the public choose their representatives. He calls it a priority on his Christmas wish list.
“To me (improvements and gains made under appointed boards) shows that the problems lie with bloated bureaucracy and poor governance that keep real improvements from happening in the classroom,” Donovan says.
“Sadly, this mayor (Tom Barrett) and this administration can’t seem to make up its mind on what to do, and so we continue to drift.”
Perhaps the timing is right for major changes at MPS , Donovan says, seemingly unaware that no one is actually calling for a wholesale sacking of the School Board and the MPS administration.
“The clock is ticking,” he says.

Some advice for the Detroit Public Schools

Detroit Free Press Editorial:

Now that Connie Calloway has been ousted as superintendent by the Detroit school board that hired her less than two years ago, a group of prominent local citizens is offering the DPS board some unsolicited advice about finding a good successor.
It won’t be easy, given the mess the district is in and especially given the board’s reputation as an employer and the state’s impending appointment of a powerful financial manager to get the DPS books in order. Here’s the text of a letter the group sent Tuesday to DPS Board President Carla Scott. The names of the signers are at the bottom.
Dear Honorable Carla D Scott, M.D.:
We are united in a fervent belief that a dynamic public education system is both imperative and possible here in Detroit. Because of that belief and our commitment to public education, we have conducted extensive research, both individually and collectively, to identify the dynamics that have enabled other urban districts to achieve turnarounds in the education they provide their students.
Clearly, a cornerstone of any successful school district, large or small, is aneffective superintendent who is focused on improving achievement scores, graduation rates and other critical indicators of performance.
Our kids need all of us working together to fix a broken system. Including these criteria in your selection process can help assure that we are working together with the single focus of improving the education that our children receive.

State superintendent rejects Detroit Public Schools’ bid to avoid finance manager

Chastity Pratt Dawsey:

Michigan’s top school official today rejected Detroit Public Schools’ fight against a state takeover of the district’s $1.1-billion budget.
The decision comes after a Thursday hearing where Flanagan allowed school board attorneys to explain why the state should not take control over the deficit-ridden budget. The attorneys argued that the two-day lead time Flanagan gave was not enough time to prepare a case.
Flanagan was not moved by the argument.
“I confirm my previous determination that a financial emergency exists in the Detroit Public Schools,” Flanagan wrote in an 11-page letter to the school board on Tuesday.
School board officials offered no comment today.
“The Board has received the letter and is reviewing it at this time,” DPS spokesman Steve Wasko wrote in an e-mailed response today.

Hawaii attempts random drug tests of teachers

Mark Niesse:

Hawaii public school teachers signed off on first-in-the-nation statewide random drug testing in exchange for pay raises, but now the state claims the educators are trying to take the money and run.
Since the teachers’ union approved the pact nearly two years ago, they’ve accepted the 11 percent boost in pay while fighting the random tests as an illegal violation of their privacy rights. No teacher has been tested.
The showdown over teacher drug testing arose from the highly publicized arrests of six state Education Department employees in unrelated drug cases over a six-month period. One, special education teacher Lee Anzai at Leilehua High School, pleaded guilty to selling more than $40,000 worth of crystal methamphetamine to an undercover agent.

Free Maryland Teachers from Unions

Tom Neumark:

Though some teachers may not realize it, Maryland’s laws infringe on their freedoms, place the interests of unions over individual teachers and restrict the ability of teachers to become entrepreneurs.
Teachers ought to have the right to be represented by a union. But they should also have the right to not be represented. Maryland forces teachers to be represented by unions, which violates teachers’ rights and has negative consequences for teachers and students.
There is an important distinction between being “represented” by a union and being a “member” of a union. Maryland law – like that in many other states – does not require that teachers be members of a union, but it does require them to be represented. This means that individual teachers are not permitted to negotiate their own salaries, benefits and working conditions, even if they want to. Forbidding workers from negotiating on their own behalf and requiring that a third party be involved serves no public purpose, but it does benefit unions.

Loretta Johnson responds

2005-2007 US County Property Tax Comparison

Tax Foundation:

Median real estate taxes paid as a percentage of median household income . Dane County, WI ranks 64th.
Property tax as a percentage of home value Dane County, WI ranks 133.
Median real estate taxes paid: Dane County, WI ranks 46.

Interestingly, while local property taxes have remained relatively flat, taxpayers have supported a large increase in State of Wisconsin taxes spent on K-12 public school districts. Of course these funds largely come from the same wallets that support property taxes.
Related:

Educating children is not the same as directly funding school systesm
Wisconsin state budget outlook.
Dave Blaska notes that WEAC spent over $2.1M on five key legislative elections this year.

Illinois Ripples Reach Vallas

Sarah Carr:

The sudden rise of one Chicagoan and fall of another in recent days holds a unique significance for New Orleans’ Recovery School District superintendent, Paul Vallas.
Arne Duncan, President-elect Barack Obama’s pick for secretary of education, was among Vallas’ trusted deputies when Vallas led the Chicago Public Schools.
Rod Blagojevich, the scandal-ridden Illinois governor, edged out Vallas to secure the Democratic Party nomination in the 2002 gubernatorial election.
Vallas’ former protege in urban education has made a name for himself in use of innovations such as a financial reward system for successful teachers, a pay-for-performance strategy. His former political rival, on the other hand, has become a household name because of pay-to-play allegations.
Shortly after his loss to Blagojevich, Vallas left his native city to lead the Philadelphia school system. A year-and-a-half ago, he moved to New Orleans to take over the recovery schools position.

“Educating children is not the same as directly funding school systems”

Brian Gottlob @ the Buckeye Institute, via a kind reader’s email 1.1MB PDF:

A child-centered school finance policy that supports the choices of parents can create higher-quality schools and more equality in the educational opportunities available to children. The only way to ensure that all children have the same educational opportunities and equal resources to obtain them and at the same time create powerful incentives to improve school performance, is to adopt a student-centered school funding system.
Public schools are nominally “free,” but pricing, which implicitly occurs through housing markets, fundamentally limits access to better schools and consigns less wealthy families to less desirable schools. The subsequent separation of students along class lines also means that the non-financial inputs critical to good schools, such as peer and family influences, can be even more unevenly distributed than financial resources. The unequal distribution of opportunity remains even when state aid is targeted at the “neediest” schools. state money that simply equalizes financial resources will have limited effects on the root causes of education inequities.
This report outlines an alternative approach that seeks to overcome the limits of past attempts to equalize opportunities. It investigates the combined policies of open enrollment (in public, charter, and private schools) with financial support that follows the child. such a system will make the differences in local resources for education funding largely irrelevant. We limit our report to the mechanics and implementation issues of such a system, but to highlight how key policy choices would affect its implementation and costs. The report and demonstrate its fiscal impacts. our purpose is not to argue for particular policies within such a systeis an introduction to and not the final word on a fundamental shift in school finance policy in Ohio. As such, it will invite many questions and concerns that will deserve further research.
The report:

highlights the need for a reform of ohio’s school finance system.
Documents ohio’s level of financial support and compares it to other states.
Discusses the role of property taxes in funding schools.
outlines the basic structure of a child-centered school finance system.
Presents a basic weighted system of per-pupil financial support and creates a matrix of students in ohio schools to estimate the expenditures required to fund each child under a child-centered finance system.
Presents a model to calculate the expenditures required to fund a child-centered system at different levels of per-pupil financial support and under various policy choices.
Analyzes the implications for property taxes within communities under different policy choices within a child-centered funding system.
Estimates how much money businesses and individuals would contribute towards the education of deserving, needy students after the introduction of a tax credit for donations to scholarship-granting organizations.

The Big U-Turn: How to bring schools from the brink of doom to stellar success

Emily Ayscue Hassel & Bryan Hassel:

In the 1990s Continental Airlines was struggling, even more than its troubled U.S. airline peers. As the company’s then-president Greg Brenneman explained in a 1998 article in the Harvard Business Review (HBR), “Continental ranked tenth out of the ten largest U.S. airlines in all key customer service areas as measured by the Department of Transportation: on-time arrivals, baggage handling, customer complaints, and involuntary denied boardings.” The airline had already been in bankruptcy twice, and was headed for a third round as its cash dried up.
In 1994, Gordon Bethune took the helm, with Brenneman becoming president and chief operating officer. They staved off bankruptcy by renegotiating with their creditors. And they launched an organizational turnaround that proved remarkably successful, catapulting Continental from worst to best among big U.S. carriers.
By 1995, Continental was moving up on the Department of Transportation’s (DOT’s) performance measures (see Figure 1). Its stock price was soaring. And the turnaround stuck. The latest rankings by Consumer Reports place Continental first among the seven big U.S. airlines. Zagat’s 2007 survey of frequent flyers found overall ratings for the big airlines were low and declining, with the “notable exception” of Continental. Continental was the only big airline, and one of only five overall, to be a Zagat Top Spot.

A Doomed Crusade for More Diverse Schools

Peter Applebome:

Dick Hubert’s one-man campaign to desegregate, however slightly, the Blind Brook school district thudded to its inevitable close at 10:55 p.m. Monday, at the end of a long school board meeting.
The auditorium where the meeting took place was virtually empty. The board members, so animated earlier about the cost of glue sticks and the intricacies of earth science curriculum, seemed to make a point of looking as uninterested as possible as he read his statement.
“At this point, there is nothing more for me to add to this dialogue,” Mr. Hubert concluded. “The United States will be a majority nonwhite country in the adult lifetime of the children in your care. The only question is: How well will you have prepared them for being citizen leaders in this society?”
The board members barely looked up. He left the building and walked out into the cold rain.
Mr. Hubert, a 70-year-old retired television journalist who runs a small video production company, may not have made the most adroit case for his argument that Blind Brook, which is wealthy and 93 percent white, should make it a priority to merge some services and build links with its neighboring school district in Port Chester, which is largely poor and working class and 80 percent minorities.

No Democrat Left Behind

RiShawn Biddle:

There wasn’t much celebration yesterday for Barack Obama’s nomination of Arne Duncan as Secretary of Education from either the American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten (who praised Duncan for helping “students with the greatest needs”) or from National Education Association honcho Van Roekel (who said nothing at all). The unions, long used to getting their way with Democratic Party leaders, were more disappointed that their favorite pick — Obama adviser and No Child Left Behind Act critic Linda Darling-Hammond — didn’t get the nod.
But the real celebration came from another corner of the Democratic National Committee — the motley crew of centrist city officials and liberal activists who have long-championed (and helped pass) No Child in the first place. Declared former Daily News reporter, Joe Williams, who runs the New York-based Democrats For Education Reform: “[Duncan] will lead the charge of breaking the existing ideological and political gridlock to promote new, innovative and experimental ideas in education.”

Texas Teacher Merit Pay

Stella Chavez:

It remains unclear whether the merit pay program for teachers in Texas is yielding the results its proponents have advocated – higher student achievement.
But a two-year evaluation of the Texas Educator Excellence Grant program released Thursday shows that 90 percent of the eligible schools have participated in the voluntary initiative. That means teachers and schools are interested in the concept, said Matthew Springer, the lead author of the report and director of the National Center on Performance Incentives at Vanderbilt University’s Peabody College.
The study also found that turnover is lower among teachers who received bonus pay than those who did not.
The report said the greatest problem two years into the new system is that too many schools have to discontinue the program too quickly. A majority of the schools eligible to participate one year did not return the following year because they failed to meet eligibility requirements.
To be eligible, schools must have a high percentage of low-income students. They must also earn a recognized or exemplary state rating, or passing rates on the state math and reading tests must rank in the top quarter of Texas schools.

Obama Education Pick Backs Test-Heavy Regime

John Hechinger, Janet Adamy & Robert Tomsho:

The Obama administration’s selection of Chicago schools chief Arne Duncan as education secretary signals an intent to maintain a rigorous system of standardized tests in public schools, while experimenting with reforms disliked by unions, such as teacher merit pay.
In announcing the appointment Tuesday at a Chicago news conference, President-elect Barack Obama said he and Mr. Duncan share a “deep pragmatism” and a willingness to tap ideas often associated with conservatives. “Let’s not be clouded by ideology when it comes to figuring out what helps our kids,” Mr. Obama said.
Mr. Duncan’s “strength is really his openness to ideas and a real interest in data and how things are working,” said John Easton, executive director of the Consortium of Chicago School Research, a University of Chicago program that has studied the city’s schools.
One of Mr. Duncan’s first tasks will be deciding what to do about the federal No Child Left Behind law, enacted in 2002, and now due for reauthorization. The statute, which has divided educators, requires all students to be proficient in math and reading by 2014. Schools that don’t make adequate progress on tests measuring student achievement face sanctions.

Charter Schools Make Gains On Tests

Dan Keating & Theola Labbe-DeBose:

Students in the District’s charter schools have opened a solid academic lead over those in its traditional public schools, adding momentum to a movement that is recasting public education in the city.
The gains show up on national standardized tests and the city’s own tests in reading and math, according to an analysis by The Washington Post. Charters have been particularly successful with low-income children, who make up two-thirds of D.C. public school students.
A dozen years after it was created by Congress, the city’s charter system has taken shape as a fast-growing network of schools, whose ability to tap into private donors, bankers and developers has made it possible to fund impressive facilities, expand programs and reduce class sizes.
With freedom to experiment, the independent, nonprofit charters have emphasized strategies known to help poor children learn — longer school days, summer and Saturday classes, parent involvement and a cohesive, disciplined culture among staff members and students.

Science or Garbage?

John Tierney:

If we want our children to be scientifically literate and get good jobs in the future, why are we spending precious hours in school teaching them to be garbage collectors?
That’s the question that occurred to me after reading about the second-graders in West Virginia who fought for the right to keep recycling trash even after it became so uneconomical that public officials tried to stop the program. As my colleague Kate Galbraith reports, their teacher was proud of them for all the time they spent campaigning to keep the recycling program alive.
My colleague Andy Revkin suggests that the West Virginia students might be learning something useful about the interplay of economics and ecology, but I fear they and their teacher have missed the lesson. The reason that public officials cut back the program, as Matt Richtel and Kate reported, is the market for recyclables has collapsed because the supply vastly exceeds the demand. This could be a valuable learning experience for the students about markets and about the long-term tendency of prices of natural resources to fall while the cost of people’s time rises.

Most Textbooks Should Just Stay On the Shelf

Jay Matthews:

Most people think textbooks are important. Schools that don’t have all of theirs might find themselves accused of dereliction of duty. The Washington Post, for instance, was aghast last year that several thousand D.C. schoolbooks hadn’t yet left the warehouse when classes began.
My colleague Michael Alison Chandler underlined this in her story two weeks ago about an effort by some Virginia teachers to break the $8 billion-a-year textbook industry’s tight grip on science instruction, which often stops abruptly about the time Albert Einstein published his theory of special relativity in 1905.
The fact that such obsolescence is tolerated shows how much faith we put in textbooks. So does our acceptance of the difficulty most students have reading through a standard textbook without falling asleep. Reid Saaris, founder of the D.C.-based Equal Opportunity Schools Organization, remembers teaching 12th-grade history in Beaufort, S.C., with a particularly tedious required text. The few seniors who chose his class usually did so for inappropriate reasons. One year, five boys showed up, gave Saaris disappointed looks and said they had enrolled only “because of the hot lady who was supposed to be teaching the class.”

Milwaukee Schools Likely to Require more Math & Science

Alan Borsuk:

Three years of math, three years of science – start getting ready, all you sixth-graders in Milwaukee Public Schools.
A School Board committee voted 3-0 Monday night to increase the requirements for graduating from MPS from two years each of math and science to three, effective with the class of 2014-’15, members of which are currently sixth-graders.
In addition, students would need to complete a half-year’s worth of either an online course, community service or a service-learning project.
The proposal will go to the full board tonight and is expected to be approved.

Obama Chooses Duncan for Education Secretary

John Hechinger & Laura Meckler:

President-elect Barack Obama named Chicago schools chief Arne Duncan as his education secretary on Tuesday — choosing a hometown friend who has introduced some education reforms popular with conservatives without alienating teachers unions.
As Chicago’s top school official for seven years, Mr. Duncan has overseen the closure of struggling schools, advocated merit pay for better teachers, and adopted a program to use private money to reward children for better grades.
“When it comes to school reform, Arne is the most hands-on of hands-on practitioners,” Mr. Obama said, making the announcement at a school that he said has made remarkable progress under Mr. Duncan’s leadership.
“He’s not beholden to any one ideology, and he’s worked tirelessly to improve teacher quality,” Mr. Obama said.

Wall Street Journal live blog.
Sam Dillon has more:

Mr. Duncan, a 44-year-old Harvard graduate, has raised achievement in the nation’s third-largest school district and often faced the ticklish challenge of shuttering failing schools and replacing ineffective teachers, usually with improved results.
He represents a compromise choice in the debate that has divided Democrats in recent months over the proper course for public-school policy after the Bush years.
In June, rival nationwide groups of educators circulated competing educational manifestos, with one group espousing a get-tough policy based on pushing teachers and administrators harder to raise achievement, and another arguing that schools alone could not close the racial achievement gap and urging new investments in school-based health clinics and other social programs to help poor students learn.
Mr. Duncan was the only big-city superintendent to sign both manifestos.

Much more here

Milwaukee Schools to consider future of busing, middle schools

Alan Borsuk:

The Milwaukee School Board on Tuesday night will face a serving of a stew with many of the ingredients that make life complicated in Milwaukee Public Schools. How it decides what parts to eat or not eat will say a lot about the prospects for change in the system.
The board will take up a multi-part proposal from north side member Michael Bonds to realign a cluster of schools in the vicinity of W. Hampton and W. Silver Spring avenues from N. Green Bay Ave. to N. 35th St.
Included in the proposals are closing Carleton School, converting McNair Academy to a middle school with an emphasis on arts and science, and attempting for the first time to provide short-distance bus service to nearby schools as an alternative to busing to distant parts of town. For families living in the affected area, busing options to schools elsewhere would be restricted as a way of encouraging enrollment in the local schools.
Bonds’ proposal is one of the boldest attempts in years to reduce busing and invigorate the idea of attending schools near home. It comes after the board agreed in principle to make major cuts in busing – a stand that has not been translated into action yet.
But two School Board committee meetings last week brought out how many factors are at play. Among them:
Busing: Do people put their kids on buses to distant schools because they want to or because they don’t have much choice? Milwaukee has one of the most expansive busing policies in the country. The $102 million neighborhood school plan in recent years failed to persuade parents to take their kids off buses. Is anything different now?
K-8 vs. middle schools: Middle schools have been in sharp decline in MPS as schools offering kindergarten through eighth grade programs have increased rapidly. Is that because parents really want K-8s or because they haven’t been given quality choices in middle schools? The prevailing thinking in MPS has been that K-8s are popular, but there appears to be a growing counter-movement, with Bonds as a leading voice for middle schools.

An Update on Madison’s Small Learning Community / High School “Redesign” Plans

The Madison School Board recently received a presentation (25mb mp3 file) from the Administration on its plans for High School “redesign” and the use of the $5,500,000 Small Learning Community grant funded by our federal tax dollars. Assistant Superintendent Pam Nash along with representatives from the four large high schools participated in the discussion. The Board asked some interesting questions. President Arlene Silveira asked how this initiative relates to the District’s “Strategic Planning Process”? Vice President Lucy Mathiak asked about opportunities for advanced students.
Related:

The interesting question in all of this is: does the money drive strategy or is it the other way around? In addition, what is the budget impact after 5 years? A friend mentioned several years ago, during the proposed East High School curriculum change controversy, that these initiatives fail to address the real issue: lack of elementary and middle school preparation.

In Praise of Facts or avoiding “Fact Free” education

The Economist:

The British government’s latest crack at reforming schools is yet another step towards contentless learning
“NOW, what I want is, Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life.” How horrible for the pupils at Professor Gradgrind’s school; Charles Dickens pulled out all the grim stops in describing it. No one today really thinks that school, especially in the early years, should consist of nothing but dreary rote learning.
But children do love learning real things–why trees have leaves, how two minuses make a plus, the number of wives’ heads Henry VIII removed. Only if they begin to build up a core of knowledge can they develop the habits of mental discipline that must last them a lifetime. You cannot look up on Google something you do not know exists; and the ability to hold facts in your head is a prerequisite for many careers–the law, say, or engineering. It is not enough in primary school to learn about learning; children need to learn actual stuff.
So it is a particular disappointment that the interim version of the biggest review of British primary schooling in decades nudges the country a little further down its path toward factfree education (see article). The existing curriculum is not without its faults: repeatedly re-engineered since it was set in place 20 years ago, it is now cluttered and prescriptive. And Sir Jim Rose, once Britain’s chief inspector of primary schools, was dealt some marked cards for his review: computer skills had to be ranked alongside literacy and numeracy (though employers complain not that young job-seekers are clueless online but that they are illiterate); room had to be made to teach a modern foreign language (thank heavens); and a gaggle of personal-development goals (learning not to set fire to your friends or trash the classroom) were to be emphasised.

Menomonee Falls Superintendent Dr. Keith Marty to Facilitate Madison’s “Strategic Planning Process”

A recent Madison School Board meeting discussed the planned “Strategic Review” 10MB mp3 audio. Superintendent Dan Nerad mentioned that he planned to retain Menomonee Falls Superintendent Dr. Keith Marty to facilitate the process. Links:

Marty webcasts
Menomonee Falls “reconfiguration & transformation” news, including a discussion of their “Small Learning Community” implementation.
Clusty Search: Keith Marty
“Strategic Plan” search on the Madison School District website
Menomonee Falls School District website
Menomonee Falls High School offers 10 AP Courses, up from 7 in 2007-2008.

Board members asked the Superintendent about committee staffing (public & staff names), timing and funding.

Dane County High School AP Course Offering Comparison

The College Board recently updated their AP Course Audit data. Dane County offerings are noted below, including changes from 2007-2008:

Abundant Life Christian School: 3 Courses in 2007/2008 and 3 in 2008/2009
Cambridge High School: 1 Course in 2007/2008 and 0 in 2008/2009
De Forest High School: 8 Courses in 2007/2008 and 8 in 2008/2009
Madison East High School: 12 Courses in 2007/2008 and 12 in 2008/2009
Madison Edgewood High School: 11 Courses in 2007/2008 and 10 in 2008/2009 (11 are on offer this year. There’s been a paperwork delay for the 11th course, AP Biology due to a new teacher)
Madison LaFollette High School: 12 Courses in 2007/2008 and 6 in 2008/2009
Madison Memorial High School: 18 Courses in 2007/2008 and 17 in 2008/2009
Madison West High School: 6 Courses in 2007/2008 and 0 in 2008/2009 (I’m told that West has 6, but the College Board has a paperwork problem)
Marshall High School: 5 Courses in 2007/2008 and 5 in 2008/2009
McFarland High School: 6 Courses in 2007/2008 and 6 in 2008/2009
Middleton-Cross Plains High School: 8 Courses in 2007/2008 and 8 in 2008/2009
Monona Grove High School: 9 Courses in 2007/2008 and 8 in 2008/2009
Mt. Horeb High School: 5 Courses in 2007/2008 and 5 in 2008/2009
Oregon High School: 9 Courses in 2007/2008 and 9 in 2008/2009
Sauk Prairie High School: 10 Courses in 2007/2008 and 10 in 2008/2009
Stoughton High School: 7 Courses in 2007/2008 and 10 in 2008/2009
Sun Prairie High School: 15 Courses in 2007/2008 and 17 in 2008/2009
Verona High School: 10 Courses in 2007/2008 and 11 in 2008/2009
Waunakee High School: 6 Courses in 2007/2008 and 6 in 2008/2009
Wisconsin Heights High School: 6 Courses in 2007/2008 and 6 in 2008/2009

Related: Dual Enrollment, Small Learning Communities and Part and Full Time Wisconsin Open Enrollment.

Some K-12 Schools Cutting Costs

Anne Marie Chaker:

As state governors warn of significant shortfalls in their budgets, many schools districts are facing the biggest cutbacks they’ve seen in decades. And in some cases, they’re already slashing.
In Virginia, the Fairfax County school district is considering everything from increasing class sizes to eliminating certain high-school sports starting next fall. In Florida, the Broward County School District is looking at thousands of layoffs and eliminating certain courses and activities. The Seattle School District is even considering shuttering certain schools. This year, the Los Angeles Unified School District has already reduced 600 administrative jobs at headquarters and delayed textbook purchases.
These moves have fired up parents. Julie Jackson, the parent of a fourth-grader at Kettering Elementary School in Long Beach, Calif., says parents there have for several years been raising money for salaries, supplies and programs that the state should be paying for in the first place. She and other parents are petitioning the governor and members of the state legislature to stop any further cuts. “The parents are now at a breaking point,” the petition states.
Among the forces behind the shortfalls: Job losses are cutting into state income-tax revenue; the erosion of home values is hurting property-tax revenue; and the drop in consumer spending reduces revenue from sales tax. As a result, 37 states are projecting midyear shortfalls this fiscal year, according to a survey by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. That is compared with only seven a year ago. Based on how things are going, the center estimates that total state budget gaps for next fiscal year will likely be around $100 billion, almost 10 times what it was last fiscal year, according to Elizabeth McNichol, senior fellow at the Washington D.C.-based center.

A Look at Stephen Strachan: Principal of LA’s Jordan High School

Sandy Banks:

Under Stephen Strachan, students wear uniforms, it takes a C to pass and a ‘fifth-year senior’ program is bringing dropouts back.
You can blame the failure of Los Angeles’ latest school superintendent on racial politics, an incompetent school board or a bureaucracy impervious to reform.
But you can’t sell that to Stephen Strachan.
Strachan is the principal at Jordan High in Watts. Like Supt. David Brewer, Strachan thinks big and is brimming with self-confidence.
But unlike Brewer, Strachan has managed to move beyond summits and slogans to remake a high school long considered one of the district’s worst.
I met Strachan two years ago — about the time Brewer arrived in Los Angeles. I visited Jordan High because I wanted to know what it was like running a school that bordered one of the city’s most dangerous housing projects.

The “Certified” Teacher Myth

Wall Street Journal Editorial:

Like all unions, teachers unions have a vested interest in restricting the labor supply to reduce job competition. Traditional state certification rules help to limit the supply of “certified” teachers. But a new study suggests that such requirements also hinder student learning.
Harvard researchers Paul Peterson and Daniel Nadler compared states that have genuine alternative certification with those that have it in name only. And they found that between 2003 and 2007 students in states with a real alternative pathway to teaching gained more on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (a federal standardized test) than did students in other states.
“In states that had genuine alternative certification, test-score gains on the NAEP exceeded those in the other states by 4.8 points and 7.6 points in 4th- and 8th-grade math, respectively,” report the authors in the current issue of Education Next. “In reading, the additional gains in the states with genuine alternative certification were 10.6 points and 3.9 points for the two grade levels respectively.”
The study undermines the arguments from colleges of education and teachers unions, which say that traditional certification, which they control, is the only process that can produce quality teachers. The findings hold up even after controlling for race, ethnicity, free-lunch eligibility, class size and per-pupil state spending.

From the report:

Forty-seven states have adopted a pathway to teaching, alternative to the standard state certification otherwise required. Is this new pathway genuine or merely symbolic? Does it open the classroom door to teachers of minority background? Does it help–or hinder–learning in the classroom? Claims about all of these questions have arisen in public discourse. Recently, data have become available that allow us to check their validity.
To receive a standard state certification in most states, prospective teachers not only must be college graduates but also must have taken a specific set of education-related courses that comprise approximately 30 credit hours of coursework. Prospective teachers are well advised to pursue studies at a college or university within the state where they expect to teach, because it is often only within that state that students can get the courses required for state certification in the subject area and for the grade levels that they will be teaching.
Such certification requirements limit the supply of certified teachers, and as a result, serious teaching shortages are regularly observed. For example, in California, one-third of the entire teacher work force, about 100,000 teachers, will retire over the next decade and need to be replaced, compounding what the governor’s office calls a “severe” current teacher shortage. Other states are facing a similar situation. The National Council of Teachers of Mathematics projects a shortfall of 280,000 qualified math and science teachers by 2015. As former National Education Association president Reg Weaver put it, “At the start of every school year, we read in the newspaper…stories about schools scrambling to hire teachers.”

Please, sir, what’s history?
A missed chance to make hard choices about what children should learn

The Economist:

IF YOU are in your 40s and British, it is quite possible that your spelling is an embarrassment. You may never have been taught the distinction between “there”, “their” and “they’re”, or perhaps even your times tables. If you moved house during your primary years you may have entirely missed some vital topic–joined-up writing, say. And you may have struggled to learn to read using the “initial teaching alphabet”, a concoction of 40 letters that was supposed to provide a stepping stone to literacy but tripped up many children when they had to switch to the standard 26.
Those days of swivel-eyed theorising and untrammelled experimentation–or, as the schools inspectorate put it at the time, “markedly individual decisions about what is to be taught”–ended in 1988 with the introduction of a national curriculum. But though that brought rigour and uniformity, it also created an unwieldy–and unworldly–blueprint for the Renaissance Child. Schools have struggled to fit it all in ever since. Now, 20 years later, the primary curriculum is to be cut down.

Montgomery County Schools Seek 2% Budget Increase

Daniel de Vise:

Montgomery County School Superintendent Jerry D. Weast released a budget request yesterday that seeks almost level funding for the coming school year, a gesture of fiscal restraint likely to be repeated across the region’s school systems in coming months.
The $2.1 billion spending proposal for the fiscal year that begins in July reflects a net increase of $40 million, or 2 percent, the smallest year-to-year bump Weast has requested in nine years as Montgomery superintendent. The budget assumes just $20 million in new local funds, all cost savings from this year that Weast would carry over as revenue for next year, and $20 million from the state, chiefly to cover enrollment growth.
“It’s a flat budget,” Weast said. It is the first formal fiscal 2010 spending plan for a major local school system.
Weast said he had to close a $176 million revenue gap to balance the budget. He did that by eliminating contracted cost-of-living increases for all school system employees and by cutting $36 million in projected spending across the 139,000-student system, shedding 300 jobs.

Ira David Socol on Teach for America, KIPP Schools, and Reforming Education

Thomas:

Today we present readers an in-depth interview with Ira David Socol, author of “The Drool Room” and the web site “SpeEdChange.” Our interest in talking with Ira centered upon three critical factors.
First, there is little doubt that Ira is passionate about education and the process of learning. More importantly, that passion is relentlessly focused on creating a learning process that is responsive to the needs of learners.
Second, to be frank, Ira shares some of our views on how best to reform education. He notes that there are a multitude of ways to create positive learning opportunities for students but our current school structures prevent the flexibility necessary to provide alternate paths. Like OpenEducation.net, he is also a strong proponent of the use of technology yet does not buy into the “digital natives” nonsense.

Informational and Community Discussion Sessions on the Madison Mathematics Task Force

Date: January 6th, 2009

Time: 6:00 – 8:00 pm

Where: LaFollette High School – LMC

Date: January 7th, 2009

Time: 6:00 – 8:00 pm

Where: Memorial High School – Wisconsin Neighborhood Center

You are cordially invited to attend an information session and discussion about the findings and recommendations of the Math Task Force which recently completed a review of the MMSD K-12 Mathematics program. Please also share this information with others who may be interested in attending.
At each session, there will be a brief informational presentation followed by an opportunity for discussion. The Executive Summary and complete Task Force Report can be found at http://www.madison.k12.wi.us/boe/math/.
We are looking forward to sharing this information with you and learning about your reactions to the research and recommendations included in the report. Your thoughts are important to us as we work to improve the MMSD K-12 Mathematics program.
Questions/comments? Please contact Brian Sniff at bsniff@madison.k12.wi.us
Looking forward to seeing you on January 6th or 7th.

Gangs in Dane County? Yes, they’re everywhere, detective says

Karyn Saemann:

Gangs are everywhere in Dane County, from the largest Madison high schools to the smallest rural hamlets.
In the latest of a series of informational meetings led by a Dane County detective who monitors local gang activity, Sun Prairie parents were told their help is needed.
Detective Joel Wagner estimated that 3 to 4 percent of Dane County youths are involved in a gang. Recruiting begins in the fourth grade, he said; gang members can be of any race and socioeconomic status, but are primarily kids who have fallen away from school and family and are looking for a group to belong to.
“The best thing is prevention,” Wagner said. “We need to get back to eyes and ears.”
“Know your children’s friends. Know them well,” he said. “Know your children’s friends’ parents. Know them better.”
Wednesday night’s meeting at Sun Prairie High School stretched more than two hours and included disturbing video of gang fights and other violence from Dane County and across the nation as well as online photos of gang members who identify themselves as being from Sun Prairie and other Dane County communities.
Particularly disturbing was video — not from Dane County — of a gang initiation in which a teen’s head was smashed into a cement curb and into a florescent light tube. In another video, a teen was beaten in a bathroom as part of an initiation.

Recommendations of the Washington Basic Education Task Force

AP:

Among the recommendations from the state’s Basic Education Task Force to the state Legislature:

Paying teachers different amounts, comparable to regional wages paid to nonschool employees in their communities.
Defining basic education as the schooling needed to help students meet new high-school-graduation requirements adopted by the state Board of Education, and Washington’s college-admission standards.
Increasing instructional time, particularly for high-school students, and therefore paying teachers more.
Decreasing class sizes in grades kindergarten through third grade.
Paying teachers for a set number of training days outside of the 180 days of instructional time and strictly reserving all instructional days for education.

Scores on Science Test Causing Concern in U.S.

Maria Glod:

U.S. students are doing no better on an international science exam than they were in the mid-1990s, a performance plateau that leaves educators and policymakers worried about how schools are preparing students to compete in an increasingly global economy.
Results of the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), released yesterday, show how fourth- and eighth-graders in the United States measure up to peers around the world. U.S. students showed gains in math in both grades. But average science performance, although still stronger than in many countries, has stagnated since 1995.
Students in Singapore, Taiwan, Japan and Hong Kong outperformed U.S. fourth-graders in science. The U.S. students had an average score of 539 on a 1,000-point scale, higher than their peers in 25 countries.

Advocating for Public Education Reform

Gary Sharrer:

Five Texas education leaders, including former Education Commissioner Mike Moses, are proposing college or workplace readiness as the standard for all high school graduates in their plan to improve public education.
They also advocate a better accountability system, more money to improve student performance and a shared partnership between the state and local school districts.
The education leaders have often disagreed on education ideas but drafted a framework of shared principles they believe can serve as a starting ground for continued debate.
The five are attorney David Thompson, a school finance expert; Sandy Kress, who helped President Bush develop No Child Left Behind; Don McAdams, president of the Center for Reform of School Systems and a former member of the Houston Independent School District board; Jim Windham, former chairman of the Texas Association of Business; and Moses, education commissioner under Gov. George W. Bush.

Up Close, Rhee’s Image Less Clear
Schools Chief’s Media Stardom Hasn’t Dispelled the Misgivings in D.C.

Bill Turque:

The Atlantic Monthly, the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times have chronicled her battles with the Washington Teachers’ Union. The PBS “NewsHour” and “60 Minutes” have trailed her up and down school corridors. She can be seen at A-list gatherings, from Herbert Allen’s annual Sun Valley, Idaho, retreat for corporate moguls to education summits hosted by Bill Gates and the Aspen Institute.
Last week, on the cover of Time, D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee cemented her status as the national standard-bearer of tough-minded, no-excuses urban school reform. She is photographed at the front of a classroom, stern-faced and clutching a broom, symbolizing her promise of sweeping change.
For journalists and pundits who follow education, Rhee’s narrative has elements that are irresistible. A slight, young Korean American woman with no big-city school leadership experience is plucked from the nonprofit world by a reform-minded mayor in June 2007 to fire bad teachers, face down their union and take on hidebound bureaucrats, all in the name of turning around a system with a legacy of failure. The stories are not uniformly glowing, but they generally depict Rhee as a gutsy, gritty agent of change driven to turn around the District’s schools.
“Michelle Rhee charged in as chancellor of the Washington, D.C., public schools wielding BlackBerrys and data — and a giant axe,” said the Atlantic’s November issue.
Closer to home, Rhee’s media stardom has inspired a mix of praise, puzzlement and resentment. Boosters say her high profile can only help the District overhaul its schools. Others see her pursuing a national platform for a message that is hostile to older, experienced teachers and partial to younger instructors from nontraditional training programs such as Teach for America, where she started her career.

Scarsdale Adjust to Life Without Advanced Placement Classes

Winnie Hu:

The Advanced Placement English class at Scarsdale High School used to race through four centuries of literature to prepare students for the A.P. exam in May. But in this year’s class, renamed Advanced Topics, students spent a week studying Calder, Pissarro and Monet to digest the meaning of form and digressed to read essays by Virginia Woolf and Francis Bacon — items not covered by the exam.
A similarly slowed-down pace came at a cost for some students in one of Scarsdale’s Advanced Topics classes in United States history; it was still in the 1950s at the time of the exam, whose main essay question was on the Vietnam War.
Sarah Benowich, a senior, said that the A.T. approach had improved her writing but that she would have liked more dates and facts worked in. Despite studying Advanced Placement exam review books on her own, she still felt “shaky on some of the more concrete details,” she said.
A year after Scarsdale became the most prominent school district in the nation to phase out the College Board’s Advanced Placement courses — and make A.P. exams optional — most students and teachers here praise the change for replacing mountains of memorization with more sophisticated and creative curriculums.

Los Angeles Superintendent Takes a Buyout

Howard Blume, Jason Song and Mitchell Landsberg:

Under pressure by civic leaders and members of his own school board, Los Angeles Schools Supt. David L. Brewer announced Monday that he would leave his post rather than drag the district through a racially divisive fight.
The Los Angeles Unified School District Board of Education is expected to hash out the final details of an exit package today for Brewer, the retired Navy vice admiral who was supposed to bring military know-how and a deep passion for education to the job of running the nation’s second-largest school district.
“As an African American, I’ve experienced my share of discrimination,” he told reporters, school board members and district employees Monday. “I know what it looks like, smells like, and the consequences.”
“Although this debate is disconcerting and troubling, it must not become an ethnic issue. When adults fight, it can manifest itself in our children,” said Brewer, the district’s second African American superintendent. “This must not become an ethnic or racial battle that infests our schools, our campuses, our playgrounds. This is not about settling an old score; this must be about what is best for every LAUSD student.”

A Retired Teacher on Governance, Administrators and Education Flavor of the Month Theories

James Behrend:

Extraordinary times command extraordinary measures and grant extraordinary opportunities. Our state’s budget crisis calls already for kids and schools to sacrifice. It does not have to be. This is Olympia’s chance to substantially improve our entrenched education system and save some money.
Here are three problems Olympia must tackle to make a real difference:
1. Washington taxpayers support 295 independent school districts. Each district is top-heavy with too many administrators: superintendents, assistant superintendents, executive directors, curriculum directors, special ed directors, human resources directors, finance directors, transportation directors, purchasing directors and other nonteaching executives.
2. The second problem is lack of stability. Administrators introduce too often “new” educational theories. With each new administrator come new ideas. What was the silver bullet in education one year ago is toxic with a new principal or new superintendent.
I experienced over a period of 12 years changes from a six periods day to a four periods “block system” (several years in the planning). After starting the block, my school planned for two years to establish five to six autonomous Small Schools, but only one was eventually organized. In the midst of those disruptive changes, Best Practices was contemplated but never enacted; special ed and ESL students were mainstreamed, and NovaNet, a computerized distant learning, was initiated with former Gov. Gary Locke present and praising our vision. Finally, all honors classes were abandoned and differentiated instruction was introduced.
Eventually, all these new methods were delegated to the trash heap of other failed educational experiments. By 2008, the school was where it had been in 1996, minus some very good teachers and more than a few dollars.
3. The third problem is the disconnect between endorsements and competency. A sociology major gets a social sciences endorsement from the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction and may teach history, or math, or Spanish. A PE teacher may instruct students in English literature or history. A German or English teacher may teach U.S. history.

Milwaukee Voucher Funding: Fairness is in the Eye of the Beholder

Alan Borsuk:

The voucher funding flaw is a bigger problem than ever and is costing Milwaukee property taxpayers millions of dollars a year.
The voucher funding flaw effectively no longer exists, and the publicly funded program that allows children to go to private schools is saving Milwaukeeans property tax dollars.
Can both of those things be true?
Decide for yourself.
When Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett and leaders of the Milwaukee Public Schools system look at the issue, one number jumps out: 14.6%. That’s how much the property tax levy to pay for schools in the city is going up this year.
They associate a lot of that increase with the impact on local taxes of the school voucher program, which is allowing 20,000 low-income Milwaukee children to attend private schools this year.
The way vouchers are paid for now, through a combination of money from state government and Milwaukee property taxes, is a major reason why the property tax increase is so large, they say. If the formula were fair, in the eyes of Barrett and the MPS leaders, the school tax increase would be in the neighborhood of 4%, and maybe less. They say changing the voucher funding system is an urgent priority for the Legislature to tackle.
When leaders of School Choice Wisconsin, an influential group of supporters of the voucher program, look at the issue, a different number jumps out: $123. That’s how much more is being spent in property taxes this year on each student in MPS than on each voucher student.

Schools set aside meeting time for teachers to collaborate

Amy Hetzner:

To most of the working world, the business meeting is a usual – if not exactly appreciated – part of professional life.
To Jeanne Paulus, a resource teacher at Roosevelt Elementary School in Wauwatosa, her weekly meetings with fellow teachers are nothing less than earth-shattering.
While conversations between teachers might have been fleeting in years past, conducted quickly during bathroom breaks or brief moments in the day when they found themselves without their students, this year such discussions have become a regular part of the teachers’ week.
“To me, this is a huge, gigantic shift for teachers,” said Paulus, who teaches math and gifted education at Roosevelt.
The reaction is no less fervent at Kettle Moraine High School, which – like the Wauwatosa School District – started setting aside time this year for its teachers to meet after school.
At both places, students are dismissed early once a week to give their teachers time to plan, reflect on their teaching and analyze their students’ performance.
“What happens during this time is our teachers are learners, they’re not just teachers,” said Kettle Moraine High School Principal David Hay.

LAUSD superintendent’s expense account alone could pay a teacher’s salary

Steve Lopez:

I had lunch with Los Angeles Unified School District Supt. David Brewer earlier this year at a restaurant near downtown Los Angeles and almost choked. Not on the food, but the prices.
I wasn’t that hungry, fortunately, so I had the Chinese chicken salad, which cost an eye-popping $28.95. Brewer wasn’t famished either, so he just had an appetizer, the crab cakes, and those ran $16.95.
Over lunch, he defended himself against widespread criticism that he was the wrong man for the job and had been a big disappointment. But instead of talking about students, he went on and on about building a “matrix” system and “vertical” as well as “horizontal articulation.” By the end of it I had an expensive stomachache.
The L.A. Times picked up the tab, but Brewer had chosen the restaurant and he seemed to know his way around there, so I started wondering if his tastes always ran so high-end. To find out, I called the school district and requested all of his expense reports dating back to his hiring in 2006.
When the documents arrived, much of the information had been blacked out. Why? Because several high-level officials use the same credit card account, I was told, and I hadn’t asked for their expenses; only Brewer’s.

7 Habits of Highly Ineffective Principals

Jay Matthews:

Joe Nathan, a University of Minnesota school leadership scholar, dropped by recently to tell me about his latest project: the Minnesota Leadership Academy for Charter and Alternative Public Schools. He wants to produce all-star principals for innovative schools, including the charter school movement he has been studying since its beginnings.
Nathan gave me a report he just produced with Carleton College junior Joanna Plotz. Their paper, “Learning to Lead,” reveals the secrets of good management of schools and companies, derived from interviews with 24 business leaders. In the Leadership Academy, which opened this fall in cooperation with the Minnesota Department of Education, each participating educator has two mentors, one a successful business executive and the other a successful school leader.
That sounds peachy, but it doesn’t get to the heart of what many teachers tell me is the key issue in school leadership today: How did we produce so many lousy administrators?

Bill Gates: Invest in Charters

Nelson Smith:

Bill Gates was all over DC yesterday, talking about charter schools at every stop. He told the President-elect that investing in charters is a great example of how to think long-term while trying to rescue the economy, and repeated that thought in chatting with Wolf Blitzer at CNN. Then he stopped by George Washington U to talk to an invited audience about poverty, recession, and education – and delivered some remarkably forceful endorsements of charter schools and the charter model itself. Full text of this important speech here.
Here’s his central economic-strategy point. Note how he prioritizes charters:
“In a crisis, there is always a risk that you take your eyes off the future – and you sacrifice long-term investments for near-term gains…But I want us to have a bigger goal than getting the economy growing again. I want us to expand the number of people who are contributing to the economy and benefiting from it. The young woman who needs help paying for college, the young man whose charter school needs government support, the children whose parents need AIDS drugs, the poor family trying to farm in Ghana–if we don’t make these people part of our investments, when the economy comes back, they won’t be coming back with it.”

The next bailout: Here comes public education

Jim Carlini:

Public schools will be the next institutions to want more money to fix crumbling buildings, patch bloated budgets, buy more buses, and perpetuate stagnated objectives but in reality they need to re-invent education to take wholesale advantage of proven technologies from sophisticated software and broadband connectivity to distance learning and interactive video capabilities.
For the most part, public schools are an anachronism. They were designed in the Industrial Age to assimilate an agrarian society into a workforce for the Industrial Age. The Industrial Age surged into the Information Age a good forty years ago and we did not do much to change the framework of education. If anything, we bloated it with multiple assistant superintendents, curriculum advisors, crisis counselors, and a dozen more positions that were unheard of twenty years ago.
We are now well past the Information Age and are in what some would call a Mobile Internet Age. We need to embrace a whole new set of educational concepts and discard those that include teaching obsolete skills, protecting deadwood teachers and adhering to schedules that reflect the harvesting of crops.

Montgomery County Teachers & Administrators Forego 5% Pay Raise to Help Balance the Budget

Daniel de Vise & Ann Marimow:

Montgomery County teachers and other school employees have agreed to give up a 5 percent pay raise next year, a concession that saves the school system $89 million and allows Superintendent Jerry D. Weast to balance the budget.
The Montgomery County Board of Education, meeting in closed session last night, tentatively accepted the renegotiated labor deals, according to a school official.
Leaders of four employee associations, representing more than 22,000 workers, agreed Tuesday to forgo the raise all workers would have received in the fiscal year that begins in July. Weast said he and other top administrators in Maryland’s largest school system would also lose annual raises.
School officials said it was the first time since the early 1990s that Montgomery school employees had given up a contractual pay raise, a sign of the magnitude of the economic challenge. School board President Nancy Navarro (Northeastern County) credited unions with “tremendous sacrifice during these tough times.”
Budget constraints have prompted Gov. Martin O’Malley (D) to consider requiring unpaid furloughs for more than 67,000 state employees and contractors. And across the region, school officials are wondering whether they can fund cost-of-living raises in the 2009-10 academic year. Loudoun County teachers were forced to go without such raises this school year.

Number of MPS students suspended is down 15%

Alan Borsuk:

Suspensions across the Milwaukee Public Schools system are down sharply so far this school year, Superintendent William Andrekopoulos said Monday.
Andrekopoulos released figures that show suspensions in MPS, as of the end of November, down sharply from last year, showing declines of about 15% in the number of students who have been suspended and of more than 20% in the number of days students have spent on suspensions, compared with the same period a year ago.
The new figures come as MPS is under pressure to lower its high suspension rate – Andrekopoulos has called it “appalling” in the past – and improve the overall behavior climate in schools.
The Council of the Great City Schools, an organization of large urban districts, submitted a report to MPS officials last spring that called for an urgent districtwide mobilization over behavior issues, especially related to suspensions. The report says MPS schools used suspensions, often for minor matters, instead of lesser steps that could bring more constructive results. It suggests the MPS suspension rate was among the highest in the country.
Andrekopoulos said data through last week showed that 12.3% of students had been suspended at least once so far this year, compared with 14.4% in the same period last year, and that the number of “suspension days” had declined from 42,994 to 33,846.

Milwaukee Special Education Lawsuit

Dani McClain:

When Kina King goes through the classwork her children bring home from school, she has a hard time telling which belongs to 5-year-old Danielle and which belongs to 16-year-old Jamie.
That’s because Jamie, a freshman at Wisconsin Career Academy in Milwaukee, reads at the level of a second-grader. Her writing, with its d’s and b’s reversed and halting attempts at self-expression, is at a third-grade level.
King said she repeatedly had asked Milwaukee Public Schools to evaluate whether Jamie had special needs since the girl was 5. But it wasn’t until Jamie failed first grade for the third time that the district determined that she suffers from cognitive delays and needs additional support.
The question of what MPS should do to compensate the students it has failed to place in special education in a timely manner is at the heart of the third phase in an ongoing class-action suit about how MPS serves special education students. Jamie Stokes is the lead plaintiff in that suit and testified during a weeklong trial that wrapped up in November.
“If they gave her the help she would have been better, not doing coloring books her sister in kindergarten is doing,” King said.

MMSD Board of Education Progress Report – November, 2008

The major focus of our meetings in November was on aligning the work of the Board to the district’s mission and research regarding effective school boards. The emerging literature regarding the role of school board governance in improving student achievement suggests that the manner in which the Board does its work can lead to positive student achievement results. Superintendent Nerad has provided us with great amount of research and experience to guide us in our discussions. An overview of some of our major changes is below. There are a lot of details behind each of the items listed below. If you have any questions, please let us know via email: comments@madison.k12.wi.us
Arlene Silveira (516-8981)
Committees: We voted to replace the existing committees with the committees listed below in order to create a greater focus on student achievement and the need for improved student achievement and related development outcomes for the district. The committees are structured along key governing lines. Each committee is composed of the board as a whole with co-chairs.
Student Achievement and Performance Monitoring: Focuses on the district’s mission and will consist of matters related to factors leading to the improvement of student learning. Governance function: district’s mission – work and related accountability for student learning. Co-chairs: Johnny Winston Jr., Maya Cole
Planning and Development: Focuses on ensuring effective planning related to the district’s strategic plan, demographic planning, facility planning and budget planning. Governance function: planning for improved results. Co-chairs: Ed Hughes, Marj Passman
Operational Support: Focuses on financial management, building maintenance and operations, land purchase and district administrative operations, retention and hiring of staff and staff equity issues. Governance function: internal functions and ensuring quality business, finance and human resource systems. Co-chairs: Lucy Mathiak, Beth Moss
Engaging/Linking Stakeholders: We are expanding engagement practices with the goals of determining stakeholder perceptions about the district and educating members of the public to build public will and support.
6 Regular board meeting/year will be held in different schools. As part of the agenda, principals and staff will present learning data and their School Improvement Plan.
Each Board member will serve as a liaison to 7 schools to assist the Board in understanding the learning-related work in our schools.
The Board will schedule 4-6 meetings/year within the community to collect input from community stakeholders regarding “big” questions related to the district’s strategic plan and/or educational programs/services.
Ensuring a Focus on Results and Accountability:
Data retreats: As part of the work of the Student Achievement and Performance Monitoring committee, 4 meetings/year will include a data presentation related to specific student achievement and student performance measures.
Program evaluation: As part of the Student Achievement and Performance Monitoring committee, a schedule of program evaluations will be identified and implemented.
Improvement benchmarks: When the district’s strategic plan is completed. District level improvement benchmarks will be identified for each student based strategy within the plan.

Community Forum – Math Task Force Recommendations

There will be 2 forums to receive community feedback on the Math Task Force report/recommendations.
* Monday, December 8 – 6:00-8:00pm at Memorial High School
* Tuesday, December 9 – 6:00-8:00pm at La Follette High School
There will be a brief presentation on the task force recommendations, followed by a break-out session for community feedback and comments.
The Superintendent will use the feedback and comments in developing his recommendations for the Board.
As a reminder, the Math Task Force info can be found at http://www.mmsd.org/boe/math/
Thank you.
Arlene

Murdoch: “Schools a Moral Scandal”

Glynne Sutcliffe Adelaide:

Rupert Murdoch has used his fourth Boyer Lecture to slam Australian schooling. No punches pulled here. “Our public education systems are a disgrace” was almost his opening sentence. And the reason is clear : “despite spending more and more money, our children seem to be learning less and less.”
A residual affection for the land of his birth is probably the main driving force of his critique. His country is going down the gurgler. It is a realistic assessment of the situation we are in. India and China especially are poised to wipe us out. Finland irks. Singapore and Korea also graduate students who both know more and think better than Aussie grads. Intellectual sophistication in Australia is an increasingly rare and obviously endangered phenomenon. Football commands the Aussie imagination. Those who study think of learning as work, from which escape must be regularly programmed in order to maintain sanity.
Explanations for poor results abound. The teaching staffs of our schools manifest a huge compassion for instance, for the children who have a low SES (Socio-Economic Status) rating, and stress that these children don’t/can’t learn because they don’t have space at home to do their homework. Murdoch is properly scathing about this and about all the other various excuses offered to explain why so many children are learning so little:”a whole industry of pedagogues (is) devoted to explaining why some schools and some students are failing. Some say classrooms are too large. Others complain that not enough public funding is devoted to this or that program. Still others will tell you that the students who come from certain backgrounds just can’t learn.”
While George Bush may be reasonably classified as a major disaster, someone seems to have provided him with a memorable, useful and highly pertinent assessment. (The US Dept of Ed has been a good deal more useful to humanity than its Dept Of Defence).His words were resonant. He said we should overthrow “the tyranny of low expectations”.(I have written more extensively on this dereliction of professional duty in a paper that can be read at http://review100childrenturn10.blogspot.com)
Murdoch is of the same view, that all our students need us to have high expectations of them, and”the real answer is to start pursuing success”.

Lessons From 40 Years of Education ‘Reform’
Let’s abolish local school districts and finally adopt national standards.

Louis V. Gerstner, Jr.:

While the economic news has most Americans in a state of near depression, hope abounds today that the country may use the current economic crisis as leverage to address some longstanding problems. Nowhere is that prospect for progress more worthy than the crisis in our public education system.
So, from someone who realized rather glumly last week that he has been working at school reform for 40 years, here is a prescription for leadership from the Obama administration.
We must start with the recognition that, despite decade after decade of reform efforts, our public K-12 schools have not improved. We can point to individual schools and some entire districts that have advanced, but the system as a whole is still failing. High school and college graduation rates, test scores, the number of graduates majoring in science and engineering all are flat or down over the past two decades. Disappointingly, the relative performance of our students has suffered compared to those of other nations. As a former CEO, I am worried about what this will mean for our future workforce.
It is most crucial for our political leaders to ask why we are at this point — why after millions of pages, in thousands of reports, from hundreds of commissions and task forces, financed by billions of dollars, have we failed to achieve any significant progress?
Answering this question correctly is the key to finally remaking our public schools.
This is a complex problem, but countless experiments and analyses have clearly indicated we need to do four straightforward things to bring fundamental changes to K-12 education:

Set high academic standards for all of our kids, supported by a rigorous curriculum.
Greatly improve the quality of teaching in our classrooms, supported by substantially higher compensation for our best teachers.
Measure student and teacher performance on a systematic basis, supported by tests and assessments.
Increase “time on task” for all students; this means more time in school each day, and a longer school year.

Everything else either does not matter (e.g., smaller class sizes) or is supportive of these four steps (e.g., vastly improve schools of education).

“The Trouble With Textbooks”

Greg Toppo:

In 2004, the Institute for Jewish and Community Research, a San Francisco think tank, launched an effort to address “anti-Semitism and anti-Israelism” in American education, from K-12 to higher education. Its book, The UnCivil University, focused on the USA’s colleges and universities.But the effort also gave rise to an extensive survey on the political, religious and social beliefs of university faculty — some of whom admitted to holding strong prejudices against evangelical Christians.
The researchers say they found a politically active, vocal minority — especially within Middle East studies departments — that held strong anti-Israel positions. Many of the same professors holding what the researchers found were strong political biases are often tapped to review K-12 social studies, history and geography textbooks, which explain religious history, among other topics, to very young children, the institute says.
So authors Gary Tobin and Dennis Ybarra looked at 28 textbooks over nearly five years — finding what they call “glaring distortions and inaccuracies,” many centered on the books’ treatment of Israel, Judaism and Christianity. Aside from their findings on how religions are treated, their new book, The Trouble With Textbooks (Lexington Books, $21.95), which appeared on shelves this fall, in part explores problems with the textbook approval process.

Obama’s Big Test on Education

Jake Tapper:

Interestingly, though Rhee is a Democrat, she almost voted for Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.
“It was a very hard decision,” Rhee says. “I’m somewhat terrified of what the Democrats are going to do on education.”
What does President-elect Obama think? Tough to say. He has supported merit pay for teachers, which teachers’ unions oppose, and heralded Rhee. He has been a strong advocate of charter schools and in 2002 said he was “not closed minded” on the subject of vouchers, though since then he has come out against vouchers. Over the Summer, I asked him why.
“The problem is, is that, you know, although it might benefit some kids at the top, what you’re going to do is leave a lot of kids at the bottom,” he said. “We don’t have enough slots for every child to go into a parochial school or a private school. And what you would see is a huge drain of resources out of the public schools. So what I’ve said is let’s foster competition within the public school system. Let’s make sure that charter schools are up and running. Let’s make sure that kids who are in failing schools, in local school districts, have an option to go to schools that are doing well.
“But what I don’t want to do is to see a diminished commitment to the public schools to the point where all we have are the hardest-to-teach kids with the least involved parents with the most disabilities in the public schools,” Obama continued. “That’s going to make things worse, and we’re going to lose the commitment to public schools that I think have been so important to building this country.”
In March, Josh Patashnik of The New Republic took a closer look at PEBO and education, writing that Obama “has long advocated a reformist agenda that looks favorably upon things like competition between schools, test-based accountability, and performance pay for teachers. But the Obama campaign has hesitated to trumpet its candidate’s maverick credentials. As an increasingly influential chorus of donors and policy wonks pushes an agenda within the Democratic Party that frightens teachers’ unions and their traditional liberal allies, Obama seems unsure how far he can go in reassuring the former group that he’s one of them without alienating the latter. And this is a shame, because Obama may represent the best hope for real reform in decades.”

Private Schools Say They’re Thriving in Downturn

Winnie Hu & Alison Leigh Cowan:

Private schools across New York City say they are thriving this fall, with record numbers of applicants and no significant decline in donations. Yet almost daily, even brand-name schools are finding that they have to reassure jittery parents about shrinking endowments and dispel rumors that requests for financial aid are pouring in, and that economically squeezed families are pulling their children out and enrolling them in public schools.
Trinity’s interim head of school, Suellyn P. Scull, issued a letter taking issue with recent news reports that 45 families had given notice that they were leaving. Trinity, among the most competitive schools in the city, received 698 applications for the 60 kindergarten spots in this year’s class.
The school is not yet releasing admission numbers for next year’s class, but Ms. Scull wrote, “This year’s admissions season has been perhaps busier than usual, and to date we have had no reports of families planning to leave us.”
But the shrinking economy is taking a toll on investment returns at Trinity, whose endowment has fallen to $40 million from $50 million in July, and at other private schools, affecting what they can spend on programs and activities. “There’s no way of escaping it,” said Lawrence Buttenwieser, a former trustee at Dalton. “If it happens at Harvard, it will happen to everybody.”

Can She Save Our Schools? Michelle Rhee

Amanda Ripley:

In 11th grade, Allante Rhodes spent 50 minutes a day in a Microsoft Word class at Anacostia Senior High School in Washington. He was determined to go to college, and he figured that knowing Word was a prerequisite. But on a good day, only six of the school’s 14 computers worked. He never knew which ones until he sat down and searched for a flicker of life on the screen. “It was like Russian roulette,” says Rhodes, a tall young man with an older man’s steady gaze. If he picked the wrong computer, the teacher would give him a handout. He would spend the rest of the period learning to use Microsoft Word with a pencil and paper.
One day last fall, tired of this absurdity, Rhodes e-mailed Michelle Rhee, the new, bold-talking chancellor running the District of Columbia Public Schools system. His teacher had given him the address, which was on the chancellor’s home page. He was nervous when he hit SEND, but the words were reasonable. “Computers are slowly becoming something that we use every day,” he wrote. “And learning how to use them is a major factor in our lives. So I’m just bringing this to your attention.” He didn’t expect to hear back. Rhee answered the same day. It was the beginning of an unusual relationship.
The U.S. spends more per pupil on elementary and high school education than most developed nations. Yet it is behind most of them in the math and science abilities of its children. Young Americans today are less likely than their parents were to finish high school. This is an issue that is warping the nation’s economy and security, and the causes are not as mysterious as they seem. The biggest problem with U.S. public schools is ineffective teaching, according to decades of research. And Washington, which spends more money per pupil than the vast majority of large districts, is the problem writ extreme, a laboratory that failure made. (See pictures of a diverse group of American teens.)

Related: Nurith Aizenman:

“It was a very hard decision,” Rhee said of her vote. “I’m somewhat terrified of what the Democrats are going to do on education.”
No word on whether the intermediary was Jason Kamras, a top Rhee aide who advised the Obama campaign on education issues.
Now that Obama has won office, Rhee has reasons for both hope and alarm.
Before clinching the nomination, Obama bucked the National Education Association to introduce a Senate bill that would reward teachers according to the sort of statistically-based rating system Rhee champions. In his book “The Audacity of Hope,” Obama also stressed the need for linking increased teacher pay to greater accountability. And in his last debate with McCain, Obama even praised Rhee, describing her as “a wonderful new superintendent … who’s working very hard with the young mayor … who initiated, actually supports, charters.” (Rhee said she slept through that moment.)

On Obama’s School Choice

Jonah Goldberg:

n Washington, we have these arguments every time a rich Democrat sends his kids to private schools, which is very often. The real issue is why the public schools are unacceptable to pretty much anyone, liberal or conservative, who has other options.
Most Washington public schools are hellholes. So parents here — including the first family — find hypocrisy a small price to pay for fulfilling their parental obligations.
According to data compiled by the Washington Post in 2007, of the 100 largest school districts in the country, D.C. ranks third in spending for each student, around $13,000 a pupil, but last in spending on instruction. More than half of every dollar of education spending goes to the salaries of administrators. Test scores are abysmal; the campuses are often unsafe.
Michelle Rhee, D.C.’s new school chancellor, in 17 months has already made meaningful improvements. But that’s grading on an enormous curve. The Post recently reported that on observing a bad teacher in a classroom, Rhee complained to the principal. “Would you put your grandchild in that class?” she asked. “If that’s the standard,” replied the principal, “we don’t have any effective teachers in my school.”
So if Obama and other politicians don’t want to send their kids to schools where even the principals have such views, that’s no scandal. The scandal is that these politicians tolerate such awful schools at all. For anyone.

Ari Kaufman:

It was reported last week that the Obamas have chosen the elite, $30,000 per year Sidwell Friends School for their daughters. On blogs, there are the predictable arguments about whether President-elect Obama should have chosen a public school instead, with reasonable ripostes about the daughters’ safety.
These arguments, overall, are mundane and avoid the point since the Obamas enjoy the same freedom of personal decision as everyone else in terms of choosing a school within the limits of their finances. Furthermore, no matter what school they attend, Malia and Sasha Obama have all of the advantages in the world. If they truly couldn’t be expected to turn out as decent, 18-year-old products of the District of Columbia School system, then the whole enterprise of public schooling should conceivably be scrapped.
I taught students the same age as Malia and Sasha for a few years in urban Los Angeles. My school was 100% racial minority: 75% Hispanic, 25% African-American. While Sidwell’s exhaustive website notes that the school’s missions include “prizing diversity” and “environmental stewardship,” our motto was simply, “Be respectful, responsible and safe.” I made sure my students abided by that credo, and I’ve lived to write a book and numerous articles about those experiences.

Free us to fix schools

D. Aileen Dodd:

Gwinnett County Public Schools is seeking freedom from the state to overhaul its methods for improving student performance.
The proposal, which includes flexible teacher pay, increasing class sizes and using aides as stand-ins for teachers, is being crafted by Gwinnett school administrators to give the state’s largest school district the flexibility to opt out of restrictive state education mandates.
Some school officials view the mandates as hindering the system’s ability to significantly raise standardized test scores.
School administrators have submitted a 104-page draft proposal to the state that details how the system could restructure and reassign teachers with the goal of closing the achievement gap between white, black and Hispanic students by 10 percent annually and improving participation in high-level academic courses.
“We are looking at a number of factors that may be outside the box of what the current rules in the state say,” Gwinnett school board member Louise Radloff said. “The key is making sure students are more successful. Having flexibility would allow us to try some things differently.”

Montgomery County School Consortiums Assessed in Report

Daniel de Vise:

Montgomery County’s high school consortiums, set up partly as a tool for desegregation, have done little to reverse racial isolation or white flight, according to a new report from a government oversight group released this week.
But school system leaders say the programs have succeeded in giving students a measure of choice about their education and have allowed administrators to shift school populations without a painful exercise in redrawing school boundaries.
Eight of the county’s 25 high schools belong to two consortiums, which allow students to choose from a menu of programs and schools, rather than settle for a neighborhood school or compete for a selective magnet program.
“They do provide a lot of choice, and we get a lot of positive feedback from parents that they like having those options,” said Marty Creel, director of enriched and innovative programs for the school system.
But the consortium programs have not done much to erase socioeconomic inequities, according to the 64-page report, released Tuesday by the county’s Office of Legislative Oversight. It finds that “neither consortium reversed minority isolation nor improved socio-economic integration.” Poverty rates have continued to increase at schools in the programs, sometimes at a faster rate than in the county as a whole. The percen tage of white students has dwindled at all eight schools, as in the county generally.

Bill and Melinda Gates go back to school
Their crusade to fix schools earned a “needs improvement,” so they have a new plan. The most surprising beneficiaries? Community colleges.

Claudio Wallis & Spencer Fellow:

ince 2000 the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has invested $2 billion in public education, plus another $2 billion in scholarships. Most of it went into efforts to improve high schools that serve poor and minority students – mainly breaking up big, urban high schools and creating smaller, friendlier, and in theory more scholastically sound academies. (All told, the Gates Foundation gave money to 2,602 schools in 40 school districts.) Overall, it hasn’t worked. [Much more on Small Learning Communities]
“We had a high hope that just by changing the structure, we’d do something dramatic,” Gates concedes. “But it’s nowhere near enough.”
The results were a disappointing setback. So Gates and his $35 billion foundation went back to school on the issue. They spent more than a year analyzing what went wrong (and in some cases what went right). They hired new leaders for their education effort, while Gates turned his attention to philanthropy full-time after stepping away from his operating role at Microsoft last summer.
In mid-November, when Gates and his wife, Melinda, were finally ready to unveil their fresh direction, they delivered the news at a private forum at the Sheraton Seattle for America’s education elite, including New York City schools chief Joel Klein, his Washington, D.C., counterpart, Michelle Rhee, Education Secretary Margaret Spellings, and top advisors to President-elect Obama.
The upshot is that Education 2.0 is bolder and more aggressive in its goals, and it involves even more intensive investment – $3 billion over the next five years. This time the focus isn’t on the structure of public high schools but on what’s inside the classrooms: the quality of the teaching and the relevance of the curriculum. It steers smack into some of the biggest controversies in American education – tying teacher tenure and salaries to performance, and setting national standards for what is taught and tested.
And it looks beyond high school. “Our goal, with your help, is to double the number of low-income students who earn post-secondary degrees or credentials that let them earn a living wage,” declared Melinda French Gates at the Seattle gathering.

Ability Grouping for Gifted Children Podcast

Prufrock Press:

Today’s topic is one that impacts gifted kids in schools on a regular basis. In the past, gifted children were often placed into special gifted classes or special, accelerated learning groups. The thinking went that gifted children learned at a faster pace than other kids, and if you could group gifted children together it was easier for those students and their teachers to move at a faster pace through a class’ subject matter.
However, the practice of grouping students by ability has become a controversial topic in many schools. As a result, during the last few years we have seen the dismantling of special gifted classes. We’ve seen teachers move away from the use of ability groups in their classrooms.
How are gifted students affected by this change and does it make sense to move away from ability grouping?

Va. Math Standards’ Bar Might Be Raised

Michael Birnbaum:

Kindergartners would be expected to be able to count to 100, not just to 30. Perimeter and area would be introduced and explored in third grade, instead of in second grade.
Those are among many proposed revisions to Virginia’s math standards that are part of a national movement to strengthen and streamline math education to prepare all students to learn algebra and higher concepts.
The standards prescribe in detail concepts students are expected to learn in each grade, and the state verifies whether those expectations are met each year through the Standards of Learning tests. Now the standards are being revised for the second time since their introduction in 1995.

Janesville’s Craig High School Considers Closing Campus

http://www.channel3000.com/education/18055586/detail.html:

According to Dr. Mike Kuehne, the principal of Craig High School, the reasons for keeping students has to do with the fact that some students who leave for lunch don’t come back.
“What we’re really trying to do is look out for the best interest of our students,” Kuehne said.
Safety is another concern for Kuehne. School officials said that they can’t control who visits students off school property.
“They hang around young adults — 18-, 19-, 20-year-olds — many of them not from our community and they’re just hanging there to associate with the kids who are going to lunch,” Kuehne said. “It’s not an environment that we think is safe for some of our students.”
So far, if the campus is closed next year it would only affect incoming students.

Change Our Public Schools Need

Terry Moe:

Can Barack Obama bring change to American education? The answer is: Yes he can. The question, however, is whether he actually will. Our president-elect has the potential to be an extraordinary leader, and that’s why I’ve supported him since the beginning of his campaign. But on public education, he and the Democrats are faced with a dilemma that has boxed in the party for decades.
Democrats are fervent supporters of public education, and the party genuinely wants to help disadvantaged kids stuck in bad schools. But it resists bold action. It is immobilized. Impotent. The explanation lies in its longstanding alliance with the teachers’ unions — which, with more than three million members, tons of money and legions of activists, are among the most powerful groups in American politics. The Democrats benefit enormously from all this firepower, and they know what they need to do to keep it. They need to stay inside the box.
And they have done just that. Democrats favor educational “change” — as long as it doesn’t affect anyone’s job, reallocate resources, or otherwise threaten the occupational interests of the adults running the system. Most changes of real consequence are therefore off the table. The party specializes instead in proposals that involve spending more money and hiring more teachers — such as reductions in class size, across-the-board raises and huge new programs like universal preschool. These efforts probably have some benefits for kids. But they come at an exorbitant price, both in dollars and opportunities foregone, and purposely ignore the fundamentals that need to be addressed.
What should the Democrats be doing? Above all, they should be guided by a single overarching principle: Do what is best for children. As for specifics, here are a few that deserve priority.

Anything but Knowledge

“Why Johnny’s Teacher Can’t Teach” (1998)
from The Burden of Bad Ideas
Heather Mac Donald
Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2000, pp. 82ff.
America’s nearly last-place finish in the Third International Mathematics and Sciences Study of student achievement caused widespread consternation this February, except in the one place it should have mattered most: the nation’s teacher education schools. Those schools have far more important things to do than worrying about test scores–things like stamping out racism in aspiring teachers. “Let’s be honest,” darkly commanded Professor Valerie Henning-Piedmont to a lecture hall of education students at Columbia University’s Teachers College last February. “What labels do you place on young people based on your biases?” It would be difficult to imagine a less likely group of bigots than these idealistic young people, happily toting around their handbooks of multicultural education and their exposés of sexism in the classroom. But Teachers College knows better. It knows that most of its students, by virtue of being white, are complicitous in an unjust power structure.
The crusade against racism is just the latest irrelevancy to seize the nation’s teacher education schools. For over eighty years, teacher education in America has been in the grip of an immutable dogma, responsible for endless educational nonsense. That dogma may be summed up in the phrase: Anything But Knowledge. Schools are about many things, teacher educators say (depending on the decade)–self-actualization, following one’s joy, social adjustment, or multicultural sensitivity–but the one thing they are not about is knowledge. Oh, sure, educators will occasionally allow the word to pass their lips, but it is always in a compromised position, as in “constructing one’s own knowledge,” or “contextualized knowledge.” Plain old knowledge, the kind passed down in books, the kind for which Faust sold his soul, that is out.
The education profession currently stands ready to tighten its already viselike grip on teacher credentialing, persuading both the federal government and the states to “professionalize” teaching further. In New York, as elsewhere, that means closing off routes to the classroom that do not pass through an education school. But before caving in to the educrats’ pressure, we had better take a hard look at what education schools teach.
The course in “Curriculum and Teaching in Elementary Education” that Professor Anne Nelson (a pseudonym) teaches at the City College of New York is a good place to start. Dressed in a tailored brown suit, and with close-cropped hair, Nelson is a charismatic teacher, with a commanding repertoire of voices and personae. And yet, for all her obvious experience and common sense, her course is a remarkable exercise in vacuousness.

(more…)

Education remains the elephant in the room

Lori Sturdevant:

You know that line about “the best-laid plans”? It came to mind earlier this month as I sat in on a west-metro League of Women Voters briefing on big plans to tidy up the mess that’s been made of Minnesota’s school-funding system.
A “New Minnesota Miracle.” That idea was supposed to be the big issue in state House races this summer and fall. It was supposed to be top-tier policy stuff at the 2009 Legislature. The studies have been done; the proposal drafted; the stakeholders’ coalition built, and the hearings held around the state.
And the state senator who led the briefing, Minnetonka DFLer Terri Bonoff — well, according to her plan last winter, she wasn’t even going to be in the Legislature in 2009. She aimed to be off to Congress as the newly elected successor to Third District Rep. Jim Ramstad.
Plans go awry. Bonoff is still in the state Senate. The education issue is being eclipsed by economic distress and — temporarily, let us pray — by the Coleman-Franken recount.

Community Input on Math Task Force Recommendations – SAVE THE DATES!

Hi – there will be 2 community input forums to gather input from the community on the recommendations of the Math Task Force. The report of the MTF can be found at:
http://www.mmsd.org/boe/math/
The forums are scheduled for:
Monday, December 8 from 6:00-8:00pm at Memorial High School
Tuesday, December 9 from 6:00-8:00pm at LaFollette High School
I am not sure of the format yet but know this is a busy time of year so wanted to give you an opportunity to mark your calendars if you plan on attending on of the forums. I’ll send more information when available.
Arlene

“The Obamas Walk Away from Public Schools” and a Look at Sidwell Friends

Andrew Coulson:

Not that there’s anything wrong with that. In fact, it’s wonderful that the Obamas had such a broad range of public and private school choices available to them. What’s puzzling is that the president-elect opposes programs that would bring that same easy choice of schools within reach of families who lack his personal wealth. By his actions, Senator Obama is demonstrating that he is not willing to wait for his own policy prescriptions to “fix and improve” public schools, but he expects folks with less ample bank accounts to patiently await his hoped-for change.
And while many reports will no doubt trumpet the $25,000+ tuition at Sidwell Friends, implying that this is extravagantly beyond what is spent in D.C. public schools, they will be mistaken. As I wrote in the Washington Post and on this blog, D.C. public schools also spent about $25,000 per child in the 2007-08 school year.
It’s not that president-elect Obama is against spending a lot of money on other people’s kids — he’s just against letting their parents choose where that money is spent.

Michael Binyon:

It is the Quaker ethos that is the most striking feature of Sidwell Friends School, the one chosen by President-elect Obama for his daughters Sasha and Malia. A sense of community, equality and friendship runs through every classroom: children are encouraged to strive for their best, but to value above all their relations with each other and their place in the school family.
For any president trying to ensure that his children enjoy as normal an education as possible, such an ethos is invaluable. However rich, influential or politically important the parents – as many at Sidwell are – what matters is the “inner light” in every child. Pupils are not ranked by academic scores, and Sidwell never releases its SAT scores or college admission list. In race, wealth and nationality and in all else, all are treated the same. The two Obama girls will find their White House address is officially all but irrelevant.
Sidwell, founded in 1883 and now enrolling more than 1,000 children from kindergarten to 18, was a committed pioneer of integration and coeducation. More than one third of its intake belongs to ethnic minorities and one fifth receives financial assistance to help with the fees. The only preference is to those with Quaker connections. Since my wife and I went to Quaker schools, our daughter spent three happy primary years there during my time as bureau chief in Washington.

US officials flunk test of Amerian history, economics, civics

2008-2009 American Civic Liberty Report:

US elected officials scored abysmally on a test measuring their civic knowledge, with an average grade of just 44 percent, the group that organized the exam said Thursday.
Ordinary citizens did not fare much better, scoring just 49 percent correct on the 33 exam questions compiled by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute (ISI).
“It is disturbing enough that the general public failed ISI’s civic literacy test, but when you consider the even more dismal scores of elected officials, you have to be concerned,” said Josiah Bunting, chairman of the National Civic Literacy Board at ISI.
“How can political leaders make informed decisions if they don’t understand the American experience?” he added.
The exam questions covered American history, the workings of the US government and economics.
Among the questions asked of some 2,500 people who were randomly selected to take the test, including “self-identified elected officials,” was one which asked respondents to “name two countries that were our enemies during World War II.”

Take the quiz.

Are Tennessee schools too easy? ACT scores show lack of readiness

Jaime Sarrio:

Only four Tennessee public high schools are preparing students to pass basic academic courses when they go on to college, if their ACT entrance exams are the indicator.
The ACT is one of the most high-profile, high-stakes tests in the country. In Tennessee, a score of 21 out of a perfect 36 is one of the requirements to earn a lottery scholarship.
Students from Hume-Fogg and Martin Luther King magnet schools in Metro Nashville, Merrol Hyde Magnet in Hendersonville and Gatlinburg-Pittman in East Tennessee averaged ACT scores high enough over a three-year period to be considered ready for basic college coursework. Only 18 percent of Tennessee’s class of 2008 students who took the test met that standard, compared with about 22 percent of students nationally.
Education experts in the state and region say that’s more evidence of what they’ve been saying about Tennessee’s high school curriculum: It’s too easy.
“We see high school valedictorians who are forced to take remedial courses,” said Alan Richard, spokesman for the Southern Regional Education Board, a nonprofit network that focuses on learning in the South. “That means there’s a gulf between what high schools teach and what colleges expect.”

Milwaukee Schools Change Teaching, Reading & Writing Strategies; Search for New Teaching & Learning Director

Alan Borsuk:

Major changes in how Milwaukee Public Schools teaches reading and writing are coming soon, according to school Superintendent William Andrekopoulos.
He said a team of outside experts has been evaluating MPS literacy efforts and he expects to get its report in December. He said he has been given indications of what the experts will recommend.
“I think you will see this report turning things upside down, changing some past practices, and making some bold changes that we hope will improve the performance of our kids,” he said earlier this week.
He said the state Department of Public Instruction had put together the expert team and was paying for the study as part of plans aimed at bringing MPS into compliance with goals set by the federal No Child Left Behind law.
“We’re going to take it to heart, what’s in that report,” he said. “The status quo is unacceptable. . . . We realize if we just continue to do the same thing, we’re going to get the same results.”
He did not provide details of what is expected to be in the report.

Public School Parents, Unite!

Sandra Tsing Loh:

Now that we’ve made history by electing our first African-American president, what has changed? On first blush, not much, especially when it comes to our schools. Indeed, as the spiraling United States economy takes precedence, education is moving to the back burner, though sadly it was never really on the front burner during the campaign. Meanwhile Washington high society is swooning as chatty lifestyle stories document the courtship of Barack Obama’s daughters by a bevy of exclusive private schools. Am I the only one who is outraged here?
Again, I feel compelled to point out, one last time: Sarah Palin was taken tirelessly to the mat for every detail of her personal life — her mothering skills, hunting proclivities, reading habits (such as they were), the wacky names of her children, her pricey outfits and even the height of her heels. By contrast, the Obama family’s move from toney Chicago private school (chosen before presidential security was an issue) to toney Washington private school draws little national commentary. Why? Because for the ruling American political and professional class, not to mention the news media, sending one’s child to public school is unthinkable; and has nothing to do with public education policy. (Love that Teach for America, though! And universal preschool — it’s great! Computers! Innovation! Stimulation! Richard Branson! Aspen Technology Conference! Blah, blah blah.)
Meanwhile, as the fall days darken earlier, in my own Los Angeles Unified school district, citizens here have just passed a $7 billion construction bond — not because we need more new schools (we’ve already approved $20 billion via four previous bond issues), but because a consulting firm deduced that $7 billion was the size of a blank check most likely to be approved by voters.

Much more on Sandra Tsing Loh.
Classic

Academic Credit for Sports in Texas

Terrence Stutz:

The proposal, which could go into effect as early as next school year, would allow four years of sports to count as elective credits toward graduation instead of the current maximum of two years.
The board’s 10-5 vote followed often emotional debate, with both Dallas members – Republican Geraldine Miller and Democrat Mavis Knight – voting no.
Supporters said the move would keep kids in school and spur them to do well in academic courses. Critics charged that the plan would de-emphasize academics and return to the days of “football comes first.”
Ms. Miller was among the most vocal opponents, insisting the plan would “completely dismantle” many of the education reforms enacted in Texas over the last two decades.
“This takes us back to the way things used to be,” she said. “Our school reform movement put everything in perspective, with academics coming first. Now, we are opening the door to water down all the efforts we have made to strengthen standards in our schools.”
But Craig Agnew, the Brenham High School coach and teacher who petitioned the board to adopt the rule, said an “unfair burden” exists for student athletes who must meet stringent course requirements to retain their athletic eligibility.

At Transition High, teens leave past behind

Dani McClain:

From the corner of N. 27th St. and North Ave., Transition High School looks more like a strip mall than a place where teenagers are turning their lives around.
The Milwaukee public school, which opened in March, is home to students working through challenges beyond the scope of what most traditional high schools can handle. Some have been expelled. Others have served sentences in the House of Correction or a youth facility. Some have been truant for more than a year.
But on a recent day, as they wrapped up online coursework and got ready for an afternoon of off-campus rock climbing, students talked about how safe they felt.
“This is a non-violent place,” said Charles Banster, 16, and a sophomore. “Nobody has problems here.”
Another student, who said he had spent time in a large school on the city’s south side, agreed. The small environment makes him feel like he’s among family.
“I don’t like too many people around me,” said 14-year-old Tim Owens-Rice. “I just feel paranoid.” In the past, that need to define and defend his personal space has led to fights, he said.

Washington DC Schools’ Chancellor Michelle Rhee Proposes Parent Academy, Better Security

Bill Turque:

Revamped security and discipline policies, more specialized schools, a “Parent Academy” to help District parents take charge of their children’s education and the possibility of more school closures are part of the long-term vision proposed by Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee in a new document.
The 79-page “action plan,” which Rhee will present to the D.C. Council tomorrow, pulls together a broad variety of ideas that have been only hinted at publicly, including a possible end to out-of-school suspensions and an increase in the number of “theme” schools, focusing on high technology, language immersion, or gifted and talented students.
Other goals in the draft document — the need for new and better-paid teachers, higher test scores, closing the achievement gap between white and minority students — are ones she has frequently articulated. Taken together, they provide the most detailed picture of Rhee’s aspirations for the 120-school system, which is affected by declining enrollment and poor academic performance.

Head of Teachers’ Union Offers to Talk on Tenure and Merit Pay

Sam Dillon:

Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, said Monday that given the economic crisis, her union would be willing to discuss new approaches to issues like teacher tenure and merit pay.
“Faced with declining tax revenues, state and local governments are cutting” education budgets nationwide, Ms. Weingarten said in a speech to education policy makers in Washington.
“In the spirit of this extraordinary moment, and as a pledge of shared responsibility, I’ll take the first step,” she said. “With the exception of vouchers, which siphon scarce resources from public schools, no issue should be off the table, provided it is good for children and fair to teachers.”
It is unclear how much practical effect Ms. Weingarten’s speech will have on the stance her 1.4-million-member union and its locals take in negotiations with school districts or in lobbying state legislatures.

Charter schools to buy three Minneapolis district buildings

Tom Weber:

The Minneapolis School District is close to finalizing the sale of three of its shuttered buildings. But unlike previous real estate deals, the district this time entertained offers from charter schools.
St. Paul, Minn. — Minneapolis School Board member Pam Costain calls the sale of Franklin, Putnam, and Morris Park Schools “uncharted territory.” That’s because, even though the district has leased space to private schools before, there used to be a policy banning the sale of any of district buildings to charter schools — with the idea that they’re the competition.
But that’s exactly who’s in line to move into these buildings, in North, Northeast, and South Minneapolis.

Keeping Notes Afloat in Class

Michael Alison Chandler:

Third-graders at Hunters Woods Elementary School are required to learn the fundamentals of the violin. They know how to stand up straight, how to hold their instruments and how to use the tippy tips of their fingers when they press on the strings so they don’t make what their teacher calls “an icky sound.”
After learning a grand total of eight notes, they also know how to make music. Their repertoire one fall morning included pieces from a range of cultures and styles: “Caribbean Island,” “Seminole Chant,” “Good King Wenceslas.”
In Fairfax County and elsewhere, students often begin studying violin in fourth grade. Hunters Woods, an arts and science magnet school in Reston, gives them a one-year head start. Experts say the earlier children begin, the more likely they are to succeed in music.
Hunters Woods, with 950 students, is one of more than a dozen local schools in which teachers are trained through the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts to infuse arts education into other subjects. For instance, students might build instruments from recycled materials, learn science through lessons on sound and vibration or study math through measurement and patterning. Some also compose songs with lyrics inspired by Virginia history.
But music programs and the rest of the education budget are under scrutiny as the county School Board seeks to close a $220 million budget shortfall for the fiscal year that begins in July. One proposal to save about $850,000 would trim band and strings teaching positions, making it tough to keep such programs in third and fourth grades, said Roger Tomhave, fine arts coordinator for Fairfax schools.

This tune sounds familiar. Madison formerly offered a 4th grade strings program (now only in 5th).

Another Look at the Madison School District’s Use of “Value Added Assessment”

Value Added Assessment information for Madison Elementary & Middle Schools November 2008

Andy Hall:

The analysis of data from 27 elementary schools and 11 middle schools is based on scores from the Wisconsin Knowledge and Concepts Examination (WKCE), a state test required by the federal No Child Left Behind law.
Madison is the second Wisconsin district, after Milwaukee, to make a major push toward value-added systems, which are gaining support nationally as an improved way of measuring school performance.
Advocates say it’s better to track specific students’ gains over time than the current system, which holds schools accountable for how many students at a single point in time are rated proficient on state tests.
“This is very important,” Madison schools Superintendent Daniel Nerad said. “We think it’s a particularly fair way … because it’s looking at the growth in that school and ascertaining the influence that the school is having on that outcome.”
The findings will be used to pinpoint effective teaching methods and classroom design strategies, officials said. But they won’t be used to evaluate teachers: That’s forbidden by state law.
The district paid about $60,000 for the study.

Much more on “Value Added Assessment” here.
Ironically, the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction stated the following:

“… The WKCE is a large-scale assessment designed to provide a snapshot of how well a district or school is doing at helping all students reach proficiency on state standards, with a focus on school and district-level accountability. A large-scale, summative assessment such as the WKCE is not designed to provide diagnostic information about individual students. Those assessments are best done at the local level, where immediate results can be obtained. Schools should not rely on only WKCE data to gauge progress of individual students or to determine effectiveness of programs or curriculum.”

Teachers union talks of big goals in Washington

Greg Toppo:

The head of the American Federation of Teachers signaled the union’s willingness Monday to work broadly on education reform with the incoming Obama administration. It said that, with the exception of school vouchers, “no issue should be off the table.”
AFT president Randi Weingarten cautioned lawmakers nationwide against a “disinvestment in education” in the face of the economic meltdown. She warned that cutting aid to schools “places our economy in a race to the bottom for years to come.”
Weingarten already has told Congress that schools must be included in economic stimulus plans. She testified last month that lawmakers should add $20 billion to a social-services block grant to help state and local governments balance budgets without cutting education. She also said schools need $286 billion for buildings improvements.

New York City’s School Grades

Jennifer Medina:

The A-through-F grading system for New York City schools is billed as a public information tool, helping people sort out which schools are teaching children and which schools are just moving them along. Instead of inscrutable education jargon and endless score charts, the letter grades act like billboards broadcasting achievements and failures.
But for parents shopping for the best schools, the letter grades can obscure some of the most salient information, because they are determined largely by how much progress students make year to year rather than how well their skills stand up against objective standards.
While the question of how effective teachers are at moving students forward is a critical one for their bosses, many parents are equally interested in which schools are most likely to, say, have students reading at grade level or ensure that sophomores are mastering algebra. The heavy emphasis on peer comparisons to schools serving similar populations is clearly a fairer yardstick for educators, but it can hide schools burdened by particularly challenging demographics.

Bill Gates: “breaking large high schools into smaller units, on its own guaranteed no overall success”

Via a kind reader’s email:

Excerpt: “A main strategy of the schools, breaking large high schools into smaller units, on its own guaranteed no overall success, Gates said.
He said the New York City small schools were an example of successes in raising high school graduation rates — but a disappointment in that their graduates were no likelier than any city student to be prepared to go onto college.
Gates said the small number of successful schools did well not because they were structured as small schools, but because they enacted many different innovations: improved teaching quality, a longer school day, innovative instructional tools, a focus on tracking student achievement data.”

The implementation of “Small Learning Communities” in Madison has not been without controversy.

“Good News isn’t News”: Addressing Health Care Costs

FoxPolitics via a Steve Loehrke email:

Fremont School District Board of Education and FoxPolitics reader, wrote to update me with positive (!!) financial news from a school district. Refreshing!
In early March, 2007, the Post-Crescent, striving to illustrate the Freedom of Information Act for readers, requested invoices for legal charges from Weyauwega Fremont (W-F), a 1000-student school district west of Appleton. Per one of the newspaper’s articles at the time:

Using the state’s Open Records law, the newspaper fought for 10 months to see detailed invoices for attorney services after the district released heavily redacted copies ….

(P-C, March 11, 2007. The articles are no longer linkable. You can pay the P-C for an archived copy, or access articles from 1999 and later, free with your library card via Newsbank on the Appleton Public Library website.)
Loehrke objected to carte blanche (unredacted) release of the information and the P/C suit ended up costing district taxpayers about $25,000.
Quoting again from the March 11, 2007 P/C article:

District officials maintain they have not broken the law nor spent money irresponsibly, that the media is hyping the issue, and a handful of antagonistic residents are digging for dirt where none exists.
“We have willingly and openly responded promptly to more than 30 open records requests in the last year,” school board president Steve Loehrke wrote in an e-mail to The P-C this past week.

Much of the legal work paid for by W-F and questioned by the P-C, was in response to actions by district retirees unhappy with health insurance changes the board and administration were considering – changes which ultimately led to substantial savings for the District.
Loehrke is proud of his school district and concerned that good news isn’t reported.

To update you, our school district changed to a self-funded insurance plan and got rid of the WEAC owned insurance carrier. This year the school district put $800,000 (8%) of our budget into the Fund Balance. Tax rate is lowest of all surrounding school districts. Test scores are up. Permanently fixed the OPEB [Other Post-Employment Benefits] problem. Balanced the next year’s budget. Many things the newspaper could have and should have reported. Instead they wanted a whipping boy to help them sell papers. They never showed up at this year’s annual meeting. News silence. Good news isn’t news.

I talked with W-F District Administrator Jim Harlan to confirm Loehrke’s claims, and if accurate, to get the low-down on how the district achieved all this good stuff.
It seems to me the primary story is one of doggedly doing everything they can to reduce costs – to reduce costs that don’t impact learning in the classroom. Lo and behold, one way W-F reduced costs was by controlling – surprise, surprise – health insurance costs.

(more…)

Fenty, Rhee Look for Ways Around DC Teacher’s Union
Proposals Would Set Stage For School System Rebuild

Bill Turque:

Mayor Adrian M. Fenty and Schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee are discussing a dramatic expansion of their effort to remove ineffective teachers by restoring the District’s power to create nonunionized charter schools and seeking federal legislation declaring the school system in a “state of emergency,” a move that would eliminate the need to bargain with the Washington Teachers’ Union.
If adopted, the measures would essentially allow the District to begin building a new school system. Such an effort would be similar to one underway in New Orleans, where a state takeover after Hurricane Katrina placed most of the city’s 78 public schools in a special Recovery School District. About half of the district’s schools are charters, and it has no union contract.
Pursuit of the ideas would intensify the considerable national attention that Washington has drawn as a staging ground for school reforms. The moves could force a major confrontation with the union and its parent organization, the American Federation of Teachers, which has denounced the changes in New Orleans. The proposals also could place Fenty (D) and Rhee at odds with President-elect Barack Obama, who has praised their reform efforts but who also counts federation President Randi Weingarten as a major supporter in the labor movement.
Fenty and Rhee referred questions about the proposals to mayoral spokeswoman Mafara Hobson.

Social Security Administration looks at Dallas schools’ practice of issuing fake numbers

Tawnell Hobbs:

he Social Security Administration is looking into DISD’s practice of issuing fake Social Security numbers to employees hired from foreign countries and will determine whether a formal investigation is needed, Wes Davis, the agency’s spokesman in Dallas, said Friday.
Mr. Davis said the review would look at whether there was any criminal intent by the Dallas Independent School District and whether further investigation or prosecution is called for by the U.S. attorney’s office. He said he hasn’t heard of any other school districts issuing false Social Security numbers.
Richard Roper, U.S. attorney in Dallas, said he could not comment on whether his agency would investigate the matter.
DISD had been issuing the fake numbers – some of which had already been assigned to people elsewhere – for several years before ending the practice this past summer. The false numbers were issued to get the foreign citizens – mostly teachers brought in on visas to teach bilingual classes – on the payroll quickly.

Milwaukee’s neighborhood schools’ troubles go unaddressed

Dave Umhoefer:

A slight improvement in enrollment this fall – equal to about one student per building – is about all that has changed for 25 schools that were at the heart of a troubled $102 million construction program for Milwaukee Public Schools.
Officials have taken no major steps to change the situation at schools where enrollment is far below the goals set when the Neighborhood Schools Initiative was launched in 2000. A series of stories in the Journal Sentinel in August described how millions of dollars of building projects had brought little visible gain.
The lack of action has at least one School Board member unhappy.
“I see waste in the district, but no one wants to cut,” said Michael Bonds, chair of the board’s finance committee. “We have to reduce the number of buildings we have. It’s almost a mockery.”
No serious proposals related to the neighborhood project have been discussed publicly this fall to close schools or take other steps aimed at getting more bang from the $102 million.

Putting education — not unions — first

Ben DeGrow:

This year brought the biggest electoral Democratic wave in more than three decades. Yet Colorado teachers union officials may have lost, rather than gained, political ground.
Sometimes, the interests of the Democratic Party and teachers union officials align closely. The Colorado Education Association and Colorado Federation of Teachers together give Democrats about $50 in contributions for every $1 they give Republicans.
Of course, not all Democratic legislators are in the pockets of the teachers union hierarchy. It is remarkable, though, to see not one but two legislators without union connections assume the highest positions at our state Capitol. Peter Groff’s Democratic peers voted to re-elect him as state Senate president, and Rep. Terrance Carroll was selected to become the new speaker of the House.
Supporters of public school parental choice could find no better friends in the Democratic caucus than Groff and Carroll. Both men have a strong record of protecting charter schools against union-backed legislative attacks, even attacks launched by other Democrats.

Should Schools Tackle Poverty?
Yeah, let’s add that between recess and lunch.

Alexander Russo:

Don’t be surprised if you hear a lot more from teachers and board members about “out of school” social issues and programs this year. Chatter about more daring and wider-ranging approaches to school improvement is all the rage right now, as part of a longer-term pushback against accountability-based reform like NCLB.
Jumping into efforts to reach children in their home lives, however, may stretch schools’ abilities to make a real difference–and may take you and your team’s eyes off quality classroom instruction and academic improvement.
Over the past few months, there has been a slew of ideas and proposals to move beyond reform efforts that are primarily school-based. Just as the Democratic primary was wrapping up, a coalition of educators put out a call for a “broader, bolder” approach to education reform. Later in the summer, aft president-elect Randi Weingarten called for “community schools” that would provide social services as well as education. Early in the fall, Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama began touting a proposal to create “Promise Neighborhoods” around the country, in which low-income children and their parents would receive a comprehensive set of medical and social services in addition to a quality education. About a third of states have recently embarked on new antipoverty programs, according to Stateline.org .

Competing for Grammar School

Lisa Freedman:

It’s a brisk Friday morning and a skinny little boy in a large blazer stands shivering by locked school gates. Close beside him are his mother, his father and his two grandmothers, both in saris. The trembling child is right to be anxious. He is about to sit the entrance tests for Queen Elizabeth’s School in Barnet, north London, one of England’s leading grammar schools, and the odds against him passing through this narrow gateway to academic success are extremely slim. There are just 180 places available in the school’s Year Seven each year and 1,200 boys hoping to fill them.
Grammar schools have always been popular but with the financial meltdown affecting many affluent families, a free education in a traditional environment is looking highly attractive to parents of bright 10-year-olds. Fees for three children at independent secondary schools cost £50,000 or more a year, and four out of five parents pay those fees out of income.
Jenny Jones, secretary of the National Grammar Schools Association, a non-political body of parents, teachers and heads promoting grammar schools, confirms that “there have definitely been more applications from families who would normally go to independent schools”.

Universal preK brings new challenges for public elementary schools

David McKay Wilson:

In 2005, when Boston mayor Thomas Menino announced his plan to make prekindergarten available to all four-year-olds in the city, parents and early childhood advocates applauded this initiative to add a 14th year to the city’s public school system.
Three years later, after preK classrooms were established in 50 of the city’s 67 elementary schools, educators say implementing the mayor’s vision has proved to be a major challenge. There were facility issues: none of the classrooms had running water or bathrooms, so administrators lobbied to build toilet facilities in the rooms–at the cost of $35,000 each. There were oversight issues: many of the elementary school principals weren’t sensitive to the needs of four-year-olds, so Boston established a professional development academy for administrators faced with the prospect of educating preschoolers.
Then there was the impact on the elementary schools where those four-year-olds were getting ready for kindergarten. When those students turned five, they were so well prepared that the district had to retool its kindergarten curriculum to keep pace with children much more ready to learn.

Madison School Board Update

Board President Arlene Silveira:

Thank You: On behalf of the BOE, I would like to thank the community for their support in the recent referendum vote. Your support of our students and schools is appreciated. Because of your support, you have maintained our foundation and provided us three years to focus on ways to improve our schools without the constant specter of compulsory budget slashing. We are committed to continuing the “Partnership Plan” that was at the heart of the referendum. We look forward to working together, with each other and with the community. More information on our future plans is below.
Governance: As we have stated, the referendum was only a piece of a bigger plan for the district. This week the Board and the Superintendent have continued discussions on governance models which will allow us to focus our energies and attention on student achievement. We plan on starting the implementation of a new governance model in December. Community engagement will be a key part of any model we pursue. More details will be available after our November 24 BOE meeting.

Vouchers in Texas, A Worthy Experiment

The Economist:

THE Edgewood independent school district covers an unassuming part of west San Antonio, a district of fast-food joints and car-body shops, with houses that run from modest to ramshackle. It is mostly poor and mostly Hispanic, and in 1968 its government-funded public schools were so bad that a parents’ group sued the state, prompting a debate over school funding that lasted for decades. By 1998 the situation had improved. The National Education Association, America’s largest teachers’ union, said that Edgewood could be a model for other urban school districts.
Then its voucher programme started. In 1998 the Children’s Educational Opportunity Foundation, a private group, announced that it would put up $50m over the next ten years to provide vouchers for private education to any low-income Edgewood student who wanted one. The “Horizon” plan was meant to show legislators that vouchers could help students and motivate schools through competition.
Critics said the programme would take money from a school district that was poor already. One teacher wrote an angry editorial comparing Horizon to Napoleons invasion of Russia“>Napoleon’s invasion of Russia, destined for “history’s trash heap of bad ideas”.
But a report published in September [3.5MB PDF Report] by the Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF), a conservative think-tank, argues that the programme was a hit over its ten-year span. More than 4,000 students claimed the vouchers; their test scores jumped, and only two dropped out.

An Interview with Madison’s Glendale Elementary Principal Mickey Buhl

Melanie Conklin:

Mickey Buhl, 40, became principal at Glendale in 2005, taking the helm of a Madison school with significant challenges: the highest rate of low-income students at 80 percent, annual student turnover rate around 40 percent and a majority of students in either special education or English as a Second Language classes. He’s passionate about the good things happening at Glendale and working with staff members to beat those statistical odds. He’s also clearly obsessed with baseball.
MC: Is it true you worked in the Congressional Budget Office?
MB: It was my first job working for anyone other than my father. I started at the CBO after I got my master’s degree in public policy. They would send a bill and I’d estimate the cost of it. The Family and Medical Leave Act came through and I got that. The politics of Washington permeated every aspect of life, and there was enough nastiness to it that I just decided I didn’t want to make a life of it.
MC: How did you end up as a principal?

Washington, DC School Chief Takes on Teacher Tenure, and Stirs a Fight

Sam Dillon:

Michelle Rhee, the hard-charging chancellor of the Washington public schools, thinks teacher tenure may be great for adults, those who go into teaching to get summer vacations and great health insurance, for instance. But it hurts children, she says, by making incompetent instructors harder to fire.
So Ms. Rhee has proposed spectacular raises of as much as $40,000, financed by private foundations, for teachers willing to give up tenure.
Policy makers and educators nationwide are watching to see what happens to Ms. Rhee’s bold proposal. The 4,000-member Washington Teachers’ Union has divided over whether to embrace it, with many union members calling tenure a crucial protection against arbitrary firing.
“If Michelle Rhee were to get what she is demanding,” said Allan R. Odden, a professor at the University of Wisconsin who studies teacher compensation, “it would raise eyebrows everywhere, because that would be a gargantuan change.”
Last month, Ms. Rhee said she could no longer wait for a union response to her proposal, first outlined last summer, and announced an effort to identify and fire ineffective teachers, including those with tenure. The union is mobilizing to protect members, and the nation’s capital is bracing for what could be a wrenching labor struggle.

A Look Back at the November, 2008 Madison School District’s “Easy Referendum” Win

Tamira Madsen:

In the aftermath of the successful Madison Metropolitan School District referendum, many critics and supporters agree on one thing: They were surprised with district voters’ overwhelming approval of the operating referendum.
Nearly 68 percent of voters favored the referendum, which will allow the district to exceed its tax limits by $5 million during the 2009-10 school year, then by an additional $4 million in each of the following two years. The total increase of $13 million will be permanent for every year after that.
The referendum won a majority in almost every ward in the district, but Superintendent Dan Nerad admitted afterward that he wasn’t sure that the initiative would pass due to the tumultuous economy. District officials say the referendum will increase taxes for the owner of an average Madison home by $27.50 the first year, then $43 more the second year and an additional $21 in the third.

Much more on the recent referendum here.