Student Support – Page 32 – School Information System

Teacher Fired, School Disciplined For Student’s Drowning

A Department of Education investigation into the drowning of sixth grader Nicole Suriel during a class trip to Long Beach slammed Columbia Secondary School for poor planning that led to the tragedy. The beach had numerous signs noting there were no lifeguards on duty; there were three adults supervising the 24 students. The DOE fired first-year teacher Erin Bailey and disciplined assistant principal Andrew Stillman and Principal Jose Maldonado-Rivera.
The Daily News runs down some of the findings, including how “Assistant Principal Andrew Stillman decided at the last minute not to go, staying behind to do administrative work. Bailey’s boyfriend – former teacher Joseph Garnevicus, 28 – went in Stillman’s place, but couldn’t swim.” Also, “There weren’t specific permission slips, just ‘blanket’ slips from the start of the year that didn’t include swimming.” The “blanket slips” were only for trips in Manhattan; instead of issuing a permission slip to parents, Stillman simply emailed them, “We’re headed to the beach tomorrow.”

House bill would make school lunches healthier

Mary Clare Jalonick:

House Democrats are moving forward on first lady Michelle Obama’s vision for healthier school lunches, propelling legislation that calls for tougher standards governing food in school and more meals for hungry children.
A bill approved by the House Education and Labor Committee Thursday would allow the Agriculture Department to create new standards for all food in schools, including vending machine items. The legislation would spend about $8 billion more over 10 years on nutrition programs.
“This important legislation will combat hunger and provide millions of schoolchildren with access to healthier meals, a critical step in the battle against childhood obesity,” Mrs. Obama said in a statement after committee passage.
Some Republicans on the committee expressed concern about how the bill would be paid for, but three of them ended up voting for it. The legislation was approved on a 32-13 vote.

High school drug testing shows no long-term effect on use

Greg Toppo:

New research paints a decidedly mixed picture when it comes to mandatory drug testing for high school students trying out for sports or other extracurricular activities: While testing seems to reduce self-reported drug use in the short term, it has virtually no effect on teens’ plans to use drugs in the future.
A U.S. Department of Education study, out today, surveyed students at 36 high schools that got federal grants to do drug testing. Half of the schools had already begun testing for marijuana, amphetamines and other drugs; the other half had not.

The origins of literacy: Reading may involve unlearning an older skill

The Economist:

LEONARDO DA VINCI had many talents, including the ability to read (and write) mirror-writing fluently. Most adults find this extremely difficult, but new evidence suggests that recognising mirror images comes naturally to children. The 7th Forum of European Neuroscience, held in Amsterdam this week, heard that learning to read requires the brain’s visual system to undergo profound changes, including unlearning the ancient ability to recognise an object and its mirror image as identical.
Stanislas Dehaene, a cognitive neuroscientist at the French medical-research agency, INSERM, believes that skills acquired relatively recently in people’s evolutionary past must have piggybacked on regions in the brain that originally evolved for other purposes, since there has not been time for dedicated neural systems to develop from scratch..

Accepting That Good Parents May Plant Bad Seeds

Richard Freidman:

“I don’t know what I’ve done wrong,” the patient told me.
She was an intelligent and articulate woman in her early 40s who came to see me for depression and anxiety. In discussing the stresses she faced, it was clear that her teenage son had been front and center for many years.
When he was growing up, she explained, he fought frequently with other children, had few close friends, and had a reputation for being mean. She always hoped he would change, but now that he was almost 17, she had a sinking feeling.
I asked her what she meant by mean. “I hate to admit it, but he is unkind and unsympathetic to people,” she said, as I recall. He was rude and defiant at home, and often verbally abusive to family members.

Behavior problems in school linked to 2 types of families

R & D Magazine:

Contrary to Leo Tolstoy’s famous observation that “happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way,” a new psychology study confirms that unhappy families, in fact, are unhappy in two distinct ways. And these dual patterns of unhealthy family relationships lead to a host of specific difficulties for children during their early school years.
“Families can be a support and resource for children as they enter school, or they can be a source of stress, distraction, and maladaptive behavior,” says Melissa Sturge-Apple, the lead researcher on the paper and an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Rochester.
“This study shows that cold and controlling family environments are linked to a growing cascade of difficulties for children in their first three years of school, from aggressive and disruptive behavior to depression and alienation,” Sturge-Apple explains. “The study also finds that children from families marked by high levels of conflict and intrusive parenting increasingly struggle with anxiety and social withdrawal as they navigate their early school years.”
The three-year study, published July 15 in Child Development, examines relationship patterns in 234 families with six-year-old children. The research team identified three distinct family profiles: one happy, termed cohesive, and two unhappy, termed disengaged and enmeshed.

“Common core standards”: education reform that makes sen

Los Angeles Times:

In many third-grade classrooms in California, students are taught — briefly — about obtuse and acute angles. They have no way to comprehend this lesson fully. Their math training so far hasn’t taught them the concepts involved. They haven’t learned what a degree is or that a circle has 360 of them. They haven’t learned division, so they can’t divide 360 by 4 to determine that a right angle is 90 degrees, and thus understand that an acute angle is less than 90 degrees and an obtuse angle more.
It makes no pedagogical sense, but California’s academic standards call for third-graders to at least be exposed to the subject, and because angles might be on the standardized state test at the end of the year, exposed they are.
Now, that might change. In June, a yearlong joint initiative by 48 states produced a set of uniform but voluntary educational standards in English and math. Urged on by the Obama administration, the initiative’s main purpose was to encourage states with low academic standards to bring their expectations into line with those of other states. Twenty states have already adopted the standards; 28 more, including California, are considering them. Texas and Alaska are the only states that declined to participate in the project.

Clusty Search: Common Core Standards.

Long papers in high school? Many college freshmen say they never had to do one.

Jay Matthews:

Kate Simpson is a full-time English professor at the Middletown, Va., campus of Lord Fairfax Community College. She saw my column about Prince George’s County history teacher Doris Burton lamenting the decline of research skills in high school, as changing state and local course requirements and grading difficulties made required long essays a thing of the past.
So Simpson gave her freshman English students a writing assignment.
Simpson noted my complaint that few American high-schoolers, except those in International Baccalaureate programs, were ever asked to do a research project as long as 4,000 words. Was I right or wrong? Did her students feel prepared for college writing? The timing was good because her classes had just finished a three-week research writing project in which they had to cite sources, do outlines, write and revise drafts.
She said she discovered that 40 percent of her 115 students thought that their high schools had not prepared them for college-level writing. Only 23 percent thought they had those writing skills. Other responses were mixed.

Will Fitzhugh has been discussing this issue for decades….

UC online degree proposal rattles academics

Nanette Asimov:

Taking online college courses is, to many, like eating at McDonald’s: convenient, fast and filling. You may not get filet mignon, but afterward you’re just as full.
Now the University of California wants to jump into online education for undergraduates, hoping to become the nation’s first top-tier research institution to offer a bachelor’s degree over the Internet comparable in quality to its prestigious campus program.
“We want to do a highly selective, fully online, credit-bearing program on a large scale – and that has not been done,” said UC Berkeley law school Dean Christopher Edley, who is leading the effort.

Matthew Ladner has more.

The Slippery Slope Toward National Science Standards

Lindsey Burke:

The Obama Administration is successfully orchestrating one of the largest federal overreaches into education policy since the Great Society programs of the mid-1960s. If this news is coming as a surprise, it’s because the Administration is maneuvering outside of normal legislative procedure, by way of Trojan-horse programs such as Race to the Top and the suggestive power of their “blueprint” to reauthorize No Child Left Behind.
The Administration’s push for national standards and tests, which is moving quickly, is an historic federal overreach. By August 2, 2010, states must submit “evidence of having adopted common standards” in order to increase their chances of winning a Race to the Top grant. For states not enticed by the $4.35 billion grant competition, the Administration has already laid the groundwork in their blueprint for tying the $14.5 billion in Title I funding for low-income districts to the adoption of national standards–a deal that states will likely be unable to turn down.

Are we witnessing the denationalization of the higher education media?

Kris Olds:

The denationalization of higher education – the process whereby developmental logics, frames, and practices, are increasingly associated with what is happening at a larger (beyond the nation) scale continues apace. As alluded to in my last two substantive entries:
‘Bibliometrics, global rankings, and transparency’
‘The temporal rhythm of academic life in a globalizing era’
this process is being shaped by new actors, new networks, new rationalities, new technologies, and new temporal rhythms. Needless to say, this development process is also generating a myriad of impacts and outcomes, some welcome, and some not.
While the denationalization process is a phenomenon that is of much interest to policy-making institutions (e.g., the OECD), foundations and funding councils, scholarly research networks, financial analysts, universities, and the like, I would argue that it is only now, at a relatively late stage in the game, that the higher education media is starting to take more systematic note of the contours of denationalization.

What is the Education Revolution really all about?

Charlie Mas:

The League of Education Voters is trying to co-opt dissent by creating a campaign called Education Revolution and using a lot of incendiary language and images, but not taking any action.
It got me thinking about what the Revolution really is or should be. Help me clarify my thinking on this.
I think that the Revolution is about re-defining and re-purposing the District’s central functions and responsibilities. The change will come when the role of the central administration is defined. What do we want the District’s central administration to do? And what DON’T we want them to do?
Ideally, the District’s headquarters will take responsibility for everything that isn’t better decided at the school building level. They should relieve the school staff of those duties. They should:
1) Provide centralized services when those services are commodities and can achieve economies of scale. For example, HR functions, facilities maintenance, data warehousing, contracting, food service, procurement, accounting, and transportation.

Well worth reading.

Helena school board gets earful on sex ed proposal

Matt Gouras:

A proposed sex education program that teaches fifth graders the different ways people have intercourse and first graders about gay love has infuriated parents and forced the school board to take a closer look at the issue.
Helena school trustees were swamped Tuesday night at a hearing that left many of the hundreds of parents in attendance standing outside a packed board room. They urged the school board in this city nestled in the Rocky Mountains to take the sex education program back to the drawing board.
The proposed 62-page document covers a broad health and nutrition education program and took two years to draft. But it is the small portion dealing with sexual education that has drawn the ire of many in the community who feel it is being pushed forward despite its obvious controversial nature.

California’s school funding system and report of an ACT inequity

Katy Murphy:

Most people I’ve spoken with about California’s school finance system, regardless of their political views, seem to think it’s a mess. The researchers on the Governor’s Committee on Education Excellence described it as “the most complex in the country, lacking an underlying rationale and transparency.”
Mike Kirst, the Stanford University education Professor Emeritus I interviewed today, said he wouldn’t even call it a system. He called it “an accretion of incremental actions that don’t fit together and that make no sense.”
Will the courts finally force the deadlocked state Legislature to overhaul the formulas and regulations that dictate how California allocates money to its schools (and how much)? The nonprofit Public Advocates law firm hopes so. It filed suit today in Alameda Superior Court on behalf of a coalition of advocacy groups, students and parents, saying the status quo denies students the right to a meaningful education.

When Did Cheating Become an Epidemic?

Room for Debate:

For as long as exams and term papers have existed, cheating has been a temptation. But with Web technology, it’s never been easier. College professors and high school teachers are engaged in an escalating war with students over cutting and pasting articles from the Internet, sharing answers on homework assignments and even texting answers during exams. The arms race is now joined between Web sites offering free papers to download and sophisticated software that can detect plagiarism instantly

How Bellevue’s Superintendent Works

Melissa Westbrook:

Interesting article in last week’s Times about the Superintendent over in Bellevue. First, she’s never been a superintendent before; Bellevue got to her come from her consulting business in California. Two, she says she’s doing this one gig and then going back to consulting. (She was allowed to still keep that job as president something that seems to bother some. The State Auditor found no issue with her hiring of a colleague to work as an education consultant.)
What makes her most interesting is this:

The first-time superintendent is engaged in a bold move to change the teaching culture in a district that has already gained a reputation for excellence, with all five of its high schools regularly winning national acclaim.
But it’s that very reputation, the school board believes, that has masked an important failure: reaching students at the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder in a district that’s far more diverse than many may realize.
Cudeiro believes a philosophy she honed over eight years of consulting work could close the divide.

Over 5,000 anti-school bookmarks found in books at libraries in Dover, Portsmouth, Durham

Leslie Modica:

Local libraries were recently the subject of a deliberate and calculating attack — of the bookmark variety.
Volunteers and staff at the Dover Public Library spent 30 hours in May collecting more than 5,000 bookmarks secretly placed inside books at the library sometime before May.
The bookmarks contained information about the beliefs of two organizations, the School Sucks Project and Freedomain Radio.
The School Sucks Project is focused on a call to end publicly funded education because of what the group calls an attempt to stifle creativity and a valuing of order and obedience over all else in the school system, according to the group’s website.

On Facebook, Telling Teachers How Much They Meant

Susan Feinstein:

Darci Hemleb Thompson had been on the lookout for Alice D’Addario for many years. From her home in Hampton, Va., Ms. Thompson, 49, who is married and has a 12-year-old daughter, was determined to find Ms. D’Addario on the Internet. She tried every search engine and networking site she could find.
About 18 months ago she hit the jackpot.
“Nice to see one of the greatest teachers of all time on Facebook!” Ms. Thompson wrote on Ms. D’Addario’s wall. “I love to go to your page just to see your smiling face. Even your eyes still smile. You are an amazing person!”
Ms. D’Addario was Ms. Thompson’s Advanced Placement history teacher at Walt Whitman High School in Huntington Station, on Long Island, in 1977.

Milwaukee’s School Experiment Shows Promise

Patrick Wolf:

On a rainy May morning in 2008, my research team assembled at the Italian Community Center in downtown Milwaukee for focus-group sessions with the parents of students enrolled in the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program.
After a long morning of listening to parents vent about the aspects of their children’s schools that disappointed them, the tone of the meeting suddenly changed when we concluded with an “open mike” session.
“We may complain a lot about our children’s schools,” one of the parents told us, “but please, please, please don’t take our school choice away.”
Parents like this concerned mother have played a starring role in the long-running policy debate over the school-choice program, which enables parents to select a school for their child other than the assigned neighborhood public school. Charter schools, for example, offer choices within the public school system. School-choice programs like Milwaukee’s notably include private schools and are often called voucher programs.

Fighting the Dropout Crisis

Richard Lee Colvin:

In his first address to Congress in February 2009, when the nation teetered on the brink of economic collapse, President Obama declared that “dropping out of high school is no longer an option. It’s not just quitting on yourself, it’s quitting on your country–and this country needs and values the talents of every American.” Since then, the administration has made a major commitment to increasing America’s high school graduation rate, which was once the highest in the developed world and is now among the lowest. Leading researchers now agree that 25 to 30 percent of students who enroll in American high schools fail to graduate. In many of the country’s largest urban school districts, such as Detroit, Cleveland, and Indianapolis, the dropout rate is as high as 60 percent, and rates are similarly high in many rural areas. A generation ago, high school dropouts could still join the military, or get work on assembly lines, and had a fair chance of finding their way in the world. President Obama does not exaggerate when he implies that today’s America has little use for dropouts and cannot expect to flourish so long as their numbers remain so high.
The administration has proposed nearly $1 billion in its latest budget specifically for the dropout problem. And it has already put $7.4 billion on the table, including its famous Race to the Top grants, which states and districts can get only if they agree to overhaul their worst-performing high schools. These are the 2,000 or so high schools that Obama and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan refer to as “dropout factories”–schools that graduate fewer than 60 percent of their students and account for more than half the nation’s dropouts.
This level of financial commitment to fixing America’s underperforming high schools is unprecedented. The 1983 Nation at Risk report, which marked the start of the modern era of education reform, did not so much as mention the dropout problem even as it called for higher graduation requirements. Between 1988 and 1995, only eighty-nine school districts won federal grants for dropout prevention programs. The No Child Left Behind Act of 2002 applied mostly to grades three through eight. While it nominally required states to hold high schools accountable for dropout rates, it ended up allowing them to lowball the problem. Generally, the thought among educational reformers has been to concentrate on preschool and grade school education, and hope that success there would result in better student performance in high school.

What Canada can teach the U.S. about education

Lance Izumi, Jason Clemens And Lingxiao Ou, via a Kris Olds email:

Canadians, particularly those of conservative persuasion, love to compare Canada with the United States, which has a lot to learn in the key area of K-12 education. As the United States struggles with mounting deficits and debt, Americans would be well served to look north if they want to raise student performance while saving money. Canadians would be equally well served to understand their own success and expand it.
Little known to most Canadians is how well the country’s students perform on international tests, particularly when compared to the United States. The Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) is an internationally standardized test administered by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). Every three years PISA tests 15-year-olds in reading; mathematical and scientific literacy; and general competencies — that is, how well students apply the knowledge and skills they have learned at school to real-life problems.

The Twins Who Test Better

Jeremy Singer-Vine:

Female twins who shared the womb with a brother are better at visualizing shapes being rotated than those who shared the womb with a sister, according to a study in Psychological Science. Sex differences in mental rotation tasks–in which participants try matching rotated versions of 3-D block figures–have been linked to testosterone levels, with males outperforming females from an early age. Previous studies have reported that female twins from opposite-sex pairs are exposed to higher levels of testosterone in the womb than those from same-sex pairs. That degree of testosterone exposure appears to masculinize certain physiological features, such as finger-length ratios. In the present study, 804 twins, the average age of which was 22 years old, performed a mental rotation test in which they matched figures that were identical but rotated. Out of a maximum score of 24, females with a twin sister scored 9.01 on average, while females with a twin brother scored 10.26–a statistically significant difference after the researchers factored in age, birthweight and other variables. Male twins from same-sex pairs scored 12.87, while those from opposite-sex pairs averaged 13.74, but the difference between the two groups wasn’t statistically significant.
Caveat: Environmental differences between same-sex and opposite-sex twins might have influenced rotation test scores.

Parents’ Real Estate Strategy: Schools Come First

Christine Haughney:

When Ann and Jonathan Binstock started shopping for an apartment in Manhattan in 2007, their first call was not to a real estate broker. Instead, they hired an educational consultant, to show them where the best schools for their daughter, Ellen, were. After the consultant suggested the most desirable zones , they chose a two-bedroom apartment near Public School 87 on the Upper West Side. Public records show it cost $1.975 million.
Ms. Binstock said the family’s apartment “was a stretch financially.”
“We ended up buying the apartment that we live in now based on the schools,” she added. “All of our money is in our little two-bedroom apartment.”
Now Ellen is entering second grade, and the Binstocks are finding that plenty of other parents shared their real estate strategy: P.S. 87 has become so overcrowded with students that, in first grade, Ellen had no gym class, and her lunch started before 11 a.m. It has a waiting list. The Binstocks heard that a neighboring school, P.S. 199, was also crowded, with its own waiting list.

Opposing view on early education: ‘Significant dividends’

Yasmina Vinci:

At-risk children who depend on Head Start should not have their futures jeopardized by a study that leaves many questions unanswered or by decision-makers who seem to be ignoring the study’s very first conclusion: Head Start children outperformed the control group “on every measure of children’s preschool experiences.”
Head Start’s value has been affirmed by people who experience the outcomes. Just ask police chiefs who know that people who began in Head Start commit fewer crimes and go to jail less often. Just ask school administrators. For example, Montgomery County Public Schools in Maryland recently found that kindergarteners with special needs who had been in Head Start needed 3.7 hours of special education per week on average, versus 9.8 hours for non-Head Start children — a huge financial saving.

Cutting and Pasting: A Senior Thesis by (Insert Name)

Brent Staples, via a kind reader’s email:

A friend who teaches at a well-known eastern university told me recently that plagiarism was turning him into a cop. He begins the semester collecting evidence, in the form of an in-class essay that gives him a sense of how well students think and write. He looks back at the samples later when students turn in papers that feature their own, less-than-perfect prose alongside expertly written passages lifted verbatim from the Web.
“I have to assume that in every class, someone will do it,” he said. “It doesn’t stop them if you say, ‘This is plagiarism. I won’t accept it.’ I have to tell them that it is a failing offense and could lead me to file a complaint with the university, which could lead to them being put on probation or being asked to leave.”
Not everyone who gets caught knows enough about what they did to be remorseful. Recently, for example, a student who plagiarized a sizable chunk of a paper essentially told my friend to keep his shirt on, that what he’d done was no big deal. Beyond that, the student said, he would be ashamed to go home to the family with an F.

K-12 Tax & Spending Climate: Debt commission chiefs give gloomy fiscal outlook

Dan Balz:

The co-chairs of President Obama’s debt and deficit commission offered an ominous assessment of the nation’s fiscal future here Sunday, calling current budgetary trends a cancer “that will destroy the country from within” unless checked by tough action in Washington.
The two leaders — former Republican Senator Alan Simpson of Wyoming and Erskine Bowles, White House chief of staff under former President Bill Clinton — sought to build support for the work of the commission, whose recommendations due later this year are likely to spark a fierce political debate in Congress.
“There are many who hope we fail,” Simpson said at the closing session of the National Governors Association meeting. He called the 18-member commission “good people with deep, deep differences” who know the odds of success “are rather harrowing.”

How Diversity Punishes Asians, Poor Whites and Lots of Others

Russell K. Nieli:

When college presidents and academic administrators pay their usual obeisance to “diversity” you know they are talking first and foremost about race. More specifically, they are talking about blacks. A diverse college campus is understood as one that has a student body that — at a minimum — is 5 to 7 percent black (i.e., equivalent to roughly half the proportion of blacks in the general population). A college or university that is only one, two, or three percent black would not be considered “diverse” by college administrators regardless of how demographically diverse its student body might be in other ways. The blacks in question need not be African Americans — indeed at many of the most competitive colleges today, including many Ivy League schools, an estimated 40-50 percent of those categorized as black are Afro-Caribbean or African immigrants, or the children of such immigrants.
As a secondary meaning “diversity” can also encompass Hispanics, who together with blacks are often subsumed by college administrators and admissions officers under the single race category “underrepresented minorities.” Most colleges and universities seeking “diversity” seek a similar proportion of Hispanics in their student body as blacks (since blacks and Hispanics are about equal in number in the general population), though meeting the black diversity goal usually has a much higher priority than meeting the Hispanic one.
Asians, unlike blacks and Hispanics, receive no boost in admissions. Indeed, the opposite is often the case, as the quota-like mentality that leads college administrators to conclude they may have “too many” Asians. Despite the much lower number of Asians in the general high-school population, high-achieving Asian students — those, for instance, with SAT scores in the high 700s — are much more numerous than comparably high-achieving blacks and Hispanics, often by a factor of ten or more. Thinking as they do in racial balancing and racial quota terms, college admissions officers at the most competitive institutions almost always set the bar for admitting Asians far above that for Hispanics and even farther above that for admitting blacks.

Islamic Schools in US Raise Hopes, Fears

Mohamed Elshinnawi:

As the population of Muslims in the United States continues to grow, so too does the number of Islamic schools serving Muslim families across the nation.
American Muslims see these schools as a way to provide their children with a combination of good, mainstream education and training in the essentials of their faith. But critics fear some of these schools might expose Muslim children to radical Islamist views.
Religious education
Education has always been very important to the Muslim community in the United States. And like many other families, Muslim parents have educational options. They can send their children to secular, county-administered public schools or private academies while providing religious training at home or on weekends.

Dumping K-8 schools bucks a trend (and not in a good way)

Scott Elliott:

In today’s paper, Margo Rutledge Kissell writes that Dayton Public Schools is moving toward 7-12 high schools with K-6 elementary schools. The editorial page also weighed in on this issue, cautioning Superintendent Lori Ward not to get distracted by issues that won’t have a deep impact on academics.
The core question for those who want the district to improve should always be the same — will this help kids learn better? Unfortunately, the evidence says the answer to that question is most likely “no” when it comes to moving away from K-8 schools.
Let’s start with a quick history lesson.

Computers at Home: Educational Hope vs. Teenage Reality

Randall Stross:

MIDDLE SCHOOL students are champion time-wasters. And the personal computer may be the ultimate time-wasting appliance. Put the two together at home, without hovering supervision, and logic suggests that you won’t witness a miraculous educational transformation.
Still, wherever there is a low-income household unboxing the family’s very first personal computer, there is an automatic inclination to think of the machine in its most idealized form, as the Great Equalizer. In developing countries, computers are outfitted with grand educational hopes, like those that animate the One Laptop Per Child initiative, which was examined in this space in April. The same is true of computers that go to poor households in the United States.
Economists are trying to measure a home computer’s educational impact on schoolchildren in low-income households. Taking widely varying routes, they are arriving at similar conclusions: little or no educational benefit is found. Worse, computers seem to have further separated children in low-income households, whose test scores often decline after the machine arrives, from their more privileged counterparts.

Students, Meet Your New Teacher, Mr. Robot

Benedict Carey & John Markoff:

The boy, a dark-haired 6-year-old, is playing with a new companion.
The two hit it off quickly — unusual for the 6-year-old, who has autism — and the boy is imitating his playmate’s every move, now nodding his head, now raising his arms.
“Like Simon Says,” says the autistic boy’s mother, seated next to him on the floor.
Yet soon he begins to withdraw; in a video of the session, he covers his ears and slumps against the wall.
But the companion, a three-foot-tall robot being tested at the University of Southern California, maintains eye contact and performs another move, raising one arm up high.

Our battery farm schools failed… guess who’ll pay if we go free-range

Suzanne Moore:

We don’t need no edukashon – so you will be pleased to know that I am thinking about opening my own school.
After all, I only need to write 500 words (shorter than this piece) to apply to do so.
My school will have its own ‘special’ ethos. We can do it in one of those fashionable ‘pop-up’ shops or really any old unused building.
And we won’t have to bother with that dreary old national curriculum.
As I haven’t the time or the inclination to bother with employment law, management, recruiting teachers, CRB checks, admin or training anyone, I will probably have to get some kind of firm to sort it all out and pay them a fee.
Still, sounds great, doesn’t it? My free school.

Travel Club Returns To Pick Up New Generation

Kyle Norris:

An idea from the 1930’s is being used to inspire 21st century girls to stay in school. The original idea of a children’s travel club belonged to Merze Tate, a woman from rural Michigan, who was the first African-American to graduate from Oxford University. Today, another Michigan woman has revived that travel club concept to widen the world of sixth-grade girls.

A Chosen Few Are Teaching for America

Michael Winerip, via a Rick Kiley email:

Alneada Biggers, Harvard class of 2010, was amazed this past year when she discovered that getting into the nation’s top law schools and grad programs could be easier than being accepted for a starting teaching job with Teach for America.
Ms. Biggers says that of 15 to 20 Harvard friends who applied to Teach for America, only three or four got in. “This wasn’t last minute — a lot applied in August 2009, they’d been student leaders and volunteered,” Ms. Biggers said. She says one of her closest friends wanted to do Teach for America, but was rejected and had to “settle” for University of Virginia Law School.
Will Cullen, Villanova ’10, had a friend who was rejected and instead will be a Fulbright scholar. Julianne Carlson, a new graduate of Yale — where a record 18 percent of seniors applied to Teach for America — says she knows a half dozen “amazing” classmates who were rejected, although the number is probably higher. “People are reluctant to tell you because of the stigma of not getting in,” Ms. Carlson said.

Gates Foundation playing pivotal role in changes for education system

Nick Anderson:

Across the country, public education is in the midst of a quiet revolution. States are embracing voluntary national standards for English and math, while schools are paying teachers based on student performance.
It’s an agenda propelled in part by a flood of money from a billionaire prep-school graduate best known for his software empire: Bill Gates.
In the past 2 1/2 years, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has pledged more than $650 million to schools, public agencies and other groups that buy into its main education priorities.
The largest awards are powering experiments in teacher evaluation and performance pay. The Pittsburgh school district landed $40 million, Los Angeles charter schools $60 million and the Memphis schools $90 million. The Hillsborough County district, which includes Tampa, won the biggest grant: $100 million. That has set the nation’s eighth-largest school system on a quest to reshape its 15,000-member teaching corps by rewarding student achievement instead of seniority.

The Gates Foundation funded a Small Learning Community initiative at Madison West High School

Sixteen Madison Area students garner National Merit Scholarships

The Wisconsin State Journal:

The National Merit Scholarship Corp. announced 16 more local recipients of its college-sponsored Merit Scholarships on Monday.
This announcement revealed the second half of this year’s college-sponsored scholarship recipient group, with the first wave being released in late May. These winners will receive between $500 and $2,000 per year for up to four years to study at the university or college granting the scholarship.
Approximately 4,900 high school students nationwide received the college-sponsored scholarships from 201 higher education institutions this year.
Winners from Memorial High School in Madison are Brendan Caldwell (University of Minnesota), Yang Liu (Northwestern University), Sarah Percival (Rice University) and Andrea Rummel (University of Chicago).
From Madison West High School, Anya Vanecek (Grinnell College) and Aileen Lee (Northwestern) are scholarship recipients, as are Eric Anderson (New York University) and Amy Oetzel (Wheaton College) of Middleton High School.
Monona Grove’s two recipients are Olivia Finster (Grinnell College) and Madeline Stebbins (University of Oklahoma).
Other area winners are Emily Busam (Lawrence University) of Beloit Memorial High School, Nicolas Heisig (University of Houston) of Madison Country Day High School, and David Bacsik (New College of Florida) of Cambridge High School.
Jesse Vogeler-Wunsch (Marquette University) of Oregon High School, Eric Biggers (Macalester College) of Verona Area High School and Kari Edington(Michigan State) of Sun Prairie are also scholarship winners.

Congratulations!

Governance, or Potted Plant? Seattle School Board To Become More Involved In District Operations and a view from Madison

Phyllis Fletcher:

The Washington State Auditor told the district this week it has problems managing its money. They’re the same problems he’s told them about before. The school board oversees the district. And auditors for the state say it’s time for board members to get more involved.
Carr: “To the State Auditors’ point, we have work to do. And they’re right: we do.”
Sherry Carr chairs the audit and finance committee of the Seattle School Board. She says the board needs to do more to make sure problems that are found in audits don’t pop up again.
Carr: “We haven’t always had the check in prior to the start of the next audit. So, I think that’s the key.”

Washington State Auditor’s Office:

The Washington State Auditor’s Office released an audit report this week about the Seattle School District’s accountability with public resources, laws and regulations.
We found the School Board and the District’s executive management:
* Must improve oversight of District operations.
* Are not as familiar with state and federal law as the public would expect.
We identified instances of misappropriation and areas that are susceptible to misappropriation. We also found the School Board delegated authority to the Superintendent to create specific procedures to govern day-to-day District operations.
The Board does not evaluate these procedures to determine if they are effective and appropriate. Consequently, we identified 12 findings in this report and in our federal single audit and financial statement report.

Documents:

Complete Report: 700K PDF
Complete Report: 700K PDF
Washington State Auditor’s Office Accountability Audit Report 190K PDF
The Seattle School District’s response 37K PDF:

Seattle Public Schools establishes rigorous process for addressing financial year 2008-09 audit findings.
As part of the Washington State Auditor’s Office annual audit process, an Accountability Audit of Seattle Public Schools was issued on July 6, 2010. The audit’s emphasis on the need for continued improvement of internal controls and District policies for accountability is consistent with multi-year efforts under way at Seattle Public Schools to strengthen financial management.
“Because we are deeply committed to being good stewards of the public’s resources, we take the information in this audit very seriously,” said Superintendent Maria L. Goodloe-Johnson, Ph.D. “We acknowledge the need to take specific corrective actions noted in the report. It is a key priority to implement appropriate control and accountability measures, with specific consequences, for situations in which policies are not followed.”
The School Board will work closely with the Superintendent to ensure corrections are made. “We understand and accept the State Auditor’s findings,” said School Board Director Sherry Carr, chair of the Board’s Audit and Finance Committee. “We accept responsibility to ensure needed internal controls are established to improve accountability in Seattle Public Schools, and we will hold ourselves accountable to the public as the work progresses.”

Much more on the Seattle School Board.
After reading this item, I sent this email to Madison Board of Education members a few days ago:

I hope this message finds you well.
The Seattle School Board is going to become more involved in District operations due to “problems managing its money”.
http://kuow.org/program.php?id=20741
I’m going to post something on this in the next few days.
I recall a BOE discussion where Ed argued that there are things that should be left to the Administration (inferring limits on the BOE’s oversight and ability to ask questions). I am writing to obtain your thoughts on this, particularly in light of:
a) ongoing budget and accounting issues (how many years has this been discussed?), and
b) the lack of substantive program review to date (is 6 years really appropriate, given reading and math requirements of many Madison students?).
I’d like to post your responses, particularly in light of the proposed Administrative re-org and how that may or may not address these and other matters.

I received the following from Lucy Mathiak:

A GENERAL NOTE: There is a cottage industry ginning up books and articles on board “best practices.” The current wisdom, mostly generated by retired superintendents, is that boards should not trouble themselves with little things like financial management, human resources, or operations. Rather, they should focus on “student achievement.” But what that means, and the assumption that financial, HR, and other decisions have NO impact on achievement, remain highly problematical.
At the end of the day, much of the “best practices” looks a lot like the role proposed for the Milwaukee School Board when the state proposed mayoral control last year. Under that scenario, the board would focus on public relations and, a distant second, expulsions. But that would be a violation of state statute on the roles and responsibilities of boards of education.
There are some resources that have interesting info on national trends in school board training here:
http://www.asbj.com/MainMenuCategory/Archive/2010/July/The-Importance-of-School-Board-Training.aspx
I tend to take my guidance from board policy, which refers back to state statute without providing details; I am a detail person so went back to the full text. When we are sworn into office, we swear to uphold these policies and statutes:
Board policy:
“The BOARD shall have the possession, care, control, and management of the property and affairs of the school district with the responsibilities and duties as detailed in Wisconsin Statutes 118.001, 120.12, 120.13, 120.14, 120.15, 120.16, 120.17, 120.18, 120.21, 120.40, 120.41, 120.42, 120.43, and 120.44.”
Because board policy does not elaborate what is IN those statutes, the details can be lost unless one takes a look at “the rules.” Here are some of the more interesting (to me) sections from WI Statute 120:
120.12 School board duties.
The school board of a common or union high school district shall:
(1)MANAGEMENT OF SCHOOL DISTRICT.
Subject to the authority vested in the annual meeting and to the authority and possession specifically given to other school district officers, have thepossession, care, control and management of the property andaffairs of the school district, except for property of the school dis-trict used for public library purposes under s. 43.52.
(2)GENERAL SUPERVISION. Visit and examine the schools ofthe school district, advise the school teachers and administrative staff regarding the instruction, government and progress of the pupils and exercise general supervision over such schools.
(3)TAX FOR OPERATION AND MAINTENANCE.
(a) On or before November 1, determine the amount necessary to be raised to operate and maintain the schools of the school district and public library facilities operated by the school district under s. 43.52, if the annual meeting has not voted a tax sufficient for such purposes for the school year.
(5)REPAIR OF SCHOOL BUILDINGS.
Keep the school buildings and grounds in good repair, suitably equipped and in safe and sanitary condition at all times. The school board shall establish an annual building maintenance schedule.
(14)COURSE OF STUDY.
Determine the school course of study.
(17)UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN SYSTEM TUITION.
Pay the tuition of any pupil enrolled in the school district and attending an institution within the University of Wisconsin System if the pupil is not participating in the program under s. 118.55, the course the pupil is attending at the university is not offered in the school district and the pupil will receive high school credit for the course.

Ed Hughes:

Thanks for contacting us. Can you be a bit more specific about what you are looking for? A general statement about the appropriate line between administration and Board responsibilities? Something more specific about budgeting and accounting, or specific program reviews? And if so, what? I confess that I haven’t followed whatever is going on with the Seatte school board.

My followup:

I am looking for your views on BOE responsibilities vis a vis the Administration, staff and the community.
Two timely specifics, certainly are:
a) ongoing budget problems, such as the maintenance referendum spending, and
b) curricular matters such as reading programs, which, despite decades of annual multi-million dollar expenditures have failed to “move the needle”.
The Seattle District’s “problems managing its money” matter apparently prompted more Board involvement.
Finally, I do recall a BOE discussion where you argued in favor of limits on Administrative oversight. Does my memory serve?
Best wishes,
Jim

Marj Passman:

Here is the answer to your question on Evaluation which also touches on the Board’s ultimate role as the final arbiter on District Policy.
Part of the Strategic Plan, and, one of the Superintendants goals that he gave the Board last year, was the need to develop a “District Evaluation Protocol”. The Board actually initiated this by asking for a Study of our Reading Program last February. This protocol was sent to the Board this week and seems to be a timely and much needed document.
Each curricular area would rotate through a seven year cycle of examination. In addition, the Board of Education would review annually a list of proposed evaluations. There will be routine reports and updates to the Board while the process continues and, of course, a final report. At any time the Board can make suggestions as to what should be evaluated and can make changes in the process as they see fit. In other words, the Board will certainly be working within its powers as Overseer of MMSD.
This Protocol should be on the MMSD web site and I recommend reading it in
depth.
I am particularly pleased with the inclusion of “perception” – interviews, surveys with parents and teachers. I have been leery of just masses of data analysis predetermining the success or failure of children. Our children must not be reduced to dots on a chart. Tests must be given but many of our students are succeeding in spite of their test scores.
I have a problem with a 7 year cycle and would prefer a shorter one. We need to know sooner rather than later if a program is working or failing. I will bring this up at Monday’s Board meeting.
I will be voting for this Protocol but will spend more time this weekend studying it before my final vote.
Marj

The most dangerous man in America

Leonie Haimson:

Bill Gates sure is a popular guy. He is appearing this afternoon at the national conference of the American Federation of Teachers in Seattle, after having recently been the keynote speaker at the annual National Charter School convention.
Just this week, Warren Buffett announced he was giving an additional $1.6 billion to the Gates Foundation, which already had a $35 billion endowment; by far the largest in the nation.
In the past eight years, the foundation has spent nearly $4 billion promoting his personal education agenda; at first providing subsidies to districts that would agree to close down large neighborhood high schools and start small schools in their place; and now encouraging the rapid and widespread proliferation of charter schools. Gates also is aggressively promoting efforts to create programs that link teacher evaluation and compensation to standardized test scores.

K-12 Tax & Spending Climate: Today’s Pithy, Cautionary Note on Economic Trends

Bharat Balasubramanian, via Jim Fallows:

“I will state that there will be a polarization of society here in the United States. People who are using their brains are moving up. Then you have another part of society that is doing services. These services will not be paid well. But you would need services. You would need restaurants, you would need cooks, you would need drivers et cetera. You will be losing your middle class.
“This I would not see in the same fashion in Europe, because the manufacturing base there today can compete anywhere, anytime with China or India. Because their productivity and skill sets more than offset their higher costs. You don’t see this everywhere, but it’s Germany, it’s France, it’s Sweden, it’s Austria, it’s Switzerland…. So I feel Europe still will have a middle level of people. They also have people who are very rich, they also have people doing services. But there is a balance. I don’t see the balance here in the US.”

David Cameron is ‘terrified’ about finding a good London state school for his children

Nick Britten:

David Cameron has admitted that he is “terrified” by the prospect of trying to find a good state secondary school for his children in London.
Mr Cameron said that, living in central London, he sympathised with parents in areas across Britain where there was no choice of decent schools.
“I’ve got a six-year-old and a four-year-old and I’m terrified living in central London,” he said in an interview with a Sunday newspaper. “Am I going to find a good secondary school for my children? I feel it as a parent, let alone as a politician.”
Mr Cameron, who was educated at Eton, said he remained determined to send his children to state schools despite rejecting 15 primary schools for his six-year-old daughter Nancy, before sending her to St Mary Abbots, Church of England primary in Kensington.

Zuma’s goal is universal basic education

Richard Lapper:

Jacob Zuma, South Africa’s president, urged fresh efforts to bring millions of children in the developing world into the school system at a summit of African leaders held on Sunday before the World Cup final.
“We convened this summit because of our strongly held view that the first soccer World Cup tournament on African soil should have a lasting legacy,” Mr Zuma said at the meeting in Pretoria, which was also attended by UN and international sporting officials.

Atlanta schools cheating probe faces scrutiny

Alan Judd & Heather Vogell:

The head of Atlanta Public Schools promised an impartial inquiry into reports of cheating on state achievement tests. Recusing herself, Superintendent Beverly Hall declared the investigation would be conducted by “a respected outside organization.”
Five months later, the investigation remains incomplete, and questions have emerged that challenge its independence.
The “blue-ribbon” commission appointed to oversee the investigation is populated with business executives and others who have done business with the school district or who have other civic or social ties to the district or to Hall.
One of the firms chosen to run the inquiry also is a school district vendor, having collected $1.7 million for other work performed as recently as 2008.

Madison Urban League Job Openings – Deadline July 21, 2010 at 5pm

Kaleem Caire, via email:

The Urban League of Greater Madison’s Learning Department, which oversees Schools of Hope and other educational initiatives for middle and high school youth, is currently seeking dedicated, energetic and qualified candidates for various positions. Please click the position titles below or visit www.ulgm.org for a detailed job description and instructions on how to apply. Deadline for application is July 21, 2010 at 5:00pm.
Manager, Learning
Manager, Learning (Bilingual English/Spanish)
Volunteer Coordinator, Community Partnerships
Tutor and Youth Recource Center Coordinators
AmeriCorp Tutor Coordinators

What They’re Doing After Harvard: Teach for America now attracts 12% of all Ivy League seniors. The program’s founder explains why it beats working on Wall Street.

Naomi Schaefer Riley, via a Rick Kiley email:

In the spring of 1989 Wendy Kopp was a senior at Princeton University who had her sights set on being a New York City school teacher. But without a graduate degree in education or a traditional teacher certification, it was nearly impossible to break into the system. So she applied for a job at Morgan Stanley instead.
Thinking back to the bureaucratic hurdles of getting a job in a public school, Ms. Kopp tells me it “seemed more intimidating than starting Teach for America.” Which is exactly what she did as soon as she graduated.
What began as a senior thesis paper has since grown into a $180 million organization that this fall will send 4,500 of the best college graduates in the country to 100 of the lowest-performing urban and rural school districts. A few months ago, Teach for America (TFA) received an applicant pool that Morgan Stanley recruiters would drool over. Their 46,000 applicants included 12% of all Ivy League seniors, 7% of the graduating class of the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, and 6% from U.C. Berkeley. A quarter of all black seniors at Ivy League schools and a fifth of Latinos applied to be teachers in the 2010 corps. It is, I’m told by some recent grads, one of the coolest things you can do after college.

Chinese outsourcer seeks U.S. workers with IQ of 125 and up

Patrick Thibodeau:

A Chinese IT outsourcing company that has started hiring new U.S. computer science graduates to work in Shanghai requires prospective job candidates to demonstrate an IQ of 125 or above on a test it administers to sort out job applicants.
In doing so, Bleum Inc. is following a hiring practice it applies to college recruits in China. But a new Chinese college graduate must score an IQ of 140 on the company’s test.
An IQ test is the first screen for any U.S. or Chinese applicant.
The lower IQ threshold for new U.S. graduates reflects the fact that the pool of U.S. talent available to the company is smaller than the pool of Chinese talent, Bleum said.
In China, Bleum receives thousands of applications weekly, said CEO Eric Rongley. Rongley is a U.S. citizen who founded Bleum in 2001; his career prior to that included stints working in offshore development in India and later in China.

8 Theories on Why College Kids Are Studying Less

Max Fisher:

College students today are spending less time studying than they did in the past, according to a recent report. The University of California study finds that the average student at a four-year college in 1961 studied about 24 hours a week. Today’s average student hits the books for just 14 hours. That downward trend has been consistent across all kinds of schools, majors, and students. But why is this happening? Here are a few thoughts and theories, many of them courtesy of the very thoughtful commenters at Mother Jones, where blogger Kevin Drum asked “professors and current students” to suggest explanations.

Study Leaders Cite Professor Apathy The Boston Globe’s Keith O’Brien writes, “when it comes to ‘why,’ the answers are less clear. … What might be causing it, they suggest, is the growing power of students and professors’ unwillingness to challenge them.”
Modern Technology Not to Blame The Boston Globe’s Keith O’Brien says the study leaders don’t think so. “The easy culprits — the allure of the Internet (Facebook!), the advent of new technologies (dude, what’s a card catalog?), and the changing demographics of college campuses — don’t appear to be driving the change, Babcock and Marks found.” Why so sure? “According to their research, the greatest decline in student studying took place before computers swept through colleges: Between 1961 and 1981, study times fell from 24.4 to 16.8 hours per week (and then, ultimately, to 14).”

Unfair Treatment?: The Case of Freedle, the SAT, and the Standardization Approach to Differential Item Functioning; The College Board Responds

Maria Veronica Santelices and Mark Wilson:

In 2003, the Harvard Educational Review published a controversial article by Roy Freedle that claimed bias against African American students in the SAT college admissions test. Freedle’s work stimulated national media attention and faced an onslaught of criticism from experts at the Educational Testing Service (ETS), the agency responsible for the development of the SAT. In this article, Maria Veronica Santelices and Mark Wilson take the debate one step further with new research exploring differential item functioning in the SAT. By replicating Freedle’s methodology with a more recent SAT dataset and by addressing some of the technical criticisms from ETS, Santelices and Wilson confirm that SAT items do function differently for the African American and White subgroups in the verbal test and argue that the testing industry has an obligation to study this phenomenon.

The College Board responds:

The Harvard Educational Review has published a research article by Maria Veronica Santelices (Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile) and Mark Wilson (University of California, Berkeley) that is critical of the Differential Item Functioning (DIF) analyses used in the construction of the SAT®. Unfortunately, this work is deeply flawed. It utilizes only partial data sets, focuses on a student sample that lacks representation and diversity, and draws conclusions that do not match the data. Simply stated, this research does not withstand scrutiny.
The SAT is a fair assessment, and many years of independent research support this. It is the most rigorously researched and designed test in the world and is a proven, reliable measure of a student’s likelihood for college success regardless of student race, ethnicity or socioeconomic status. There is no credible research to suggest otherwise. While a few critics have promoted the notion that the test results indicate bias in the tests themselves, this theory has been by and large debunked and rejected by the psychometric community.
In reviewing this article, our researchers identified a number of fundamental flaws in the data analysis, and they also expressed serious concerns about the conclusions reached by the authors. Key concerns with this study include the following:

Madison School District Administration: Central office Transformation for Teaching and Learning Improvement

Superintendent Dan Nerad 45K PDF.:

This is a project whereby the University of Washington’s Center for Educational leadership (CEl) will support the District in its central office transformation by:
a. developing a theory of action to guide how central office leaders and principals work together to improve instructional leadership and to provide support to schools.
b. designing and implementing school cluster support teams with a focus on developing a common understanding of quality instruction and in developing stronger relationships between central office leaders and principals that are focused on growing principal instructional leadership.
The involved services draw from the research published by Dr. Meredith I. Honig and Michael A Copland

Another Madison Maintenance Referendum? District Administration Facility Assessment Report and Database

Erik Kass, Assistant Superintendent for Business Services 6.5mb pdf:

This project began when the Board of Education approved the contract with Durrant Engineering in April of2009. Durrant was hired to provide a full condition assessment of all school district buildings to identify long and short-term repair needs.
The vision of this project was to deliver to the school district a living database that would aid in the budgeting and planning process into the future.
The study focused primarily on all engineering systems and equipment, but also included an in-depth study of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) issues our school district faces. The study didn’t include roofing projects, as that work has already been completed and is continually updated on an annual basis. For the assessment, trained professional engineers visited every site within the school district, evaluating systems and conditions, while also taking actual photographs to integrate into the report. This work transitioned into a grading system that has become part of the database delivered to the school district for future planning.
All of the information gathered and organized into the database format provides a lot of functionality for the school district moving forward.
Each item has actual digital photos attached for reference, cost ranges are summarized for each item, and the ability to sort the information in various ways are examples o f the functionality of the database.
Four individuals from Durrant Engineering will be present to provide a more in-depth review of the work that was completed. This presentation will also include a demonstration ofthe database that was created to show the functionality provided to the district with this tool.
D. Describe the action requested of the BOE – Administration is looking for the Board of Education to accept the maintenance project study with the database which is the planning tool to be used for future maintenance projects.
……
Next Steps – It is the intent of Administration to work toward creating a multi-year project plan, along with projected funds necessary to implement this plan each year. This work will begin upon approval by the Board ofthe information and data within the database, and will become important work of the new Director for the division of Building Services. Our goal is to return to the Board in May/June 2011 to present this multi-year plan with projected sources of funding.

Bold added.
The District has apparently been unable to account for $23,000,000 spent via the 2005 “maintenance referendum”. Additional commentary here. Notes and links on the 2005 maintenance referendum (two out of three MMSD questions failed).

Madison School District Fund 80 Community Organization Spending Report

Superintendent Dan Nerad 1.9MB PDF:

Attached is the report summarizing progress after the first year from the community organizations receiving funding from the Madison Metropolitan School District. Also attached are the full end-of-year status reports from each organization, except the Urban League; their report will be provided in August. MMSD funding is now ended for . / African-American Ethnic Academy, Inc. . / Kajsiab House ./ Urban League of Greater Madison: Project Bootstrap 21st Century Careers Program
Funding, at this point, will continue for one more year for the other nine community organizations.

“Fund 80” taxes (and spending) may increase beyond State of Wisconsin school district limits. Fund 80 spending growth has long been a source of controversy.

Plymouth-Canton minority-teacher push stirs controversy

Shawn D. Lewis:

Efforts by one of Metro Detroit’s largest suburban school districts to recruit more minority teachers and administrators have renewed debate over the use of race in hiring decisions.
A recent directive in the Plymouth-Canton Community Schools urges administrators to scan resumes for “cues” that applicants are from a minority racial group. Tip-offs can include job-seekers’ residence, college attendance, fraternity or church membership and employment history.
Nearly a quarter of Plymouth-Canton’s nearly 19,000 students are minorities, compared with less than 3 percent of its educational staff. District officials say they want to close that gap while hiring the most-qualified candidates.

Everett makes kids walk to school to save money

Associated Press:

Children in Everett will be walking up to a mile to get to school next year. The budget saving plan has some parents worried about traffic and safety.
The school board says the plan will save the district more than $400,000.

Why Intelligent People Fail

Accelerating Future:

Content from Sternberg, R. (1994). In search of the human mind. New York: Harcourt Brace.
1. Lack of motivation. A talent is irrelevant if a person is not motivated to use it. Motivation may be external (for example, social approval) or internal (satisfaction from a job well-done, for instance). External sources tend to be transient, while internal sources tend to produce more consistent performance.
2. Lack of impulse control. Habitual impulsiveness gets in the way of optimal performance. Some people do not bring their full intellectual resources to bear on a problem but go with the first solution that pops into their heads.
3. Lack of perserverance and perseveration. Some people give up too easily, while others are unable to stop even when the quest will clearly be fruitless.
4. Using the wrong abilities. People may not be using the right abilities for the tasks in which they are engaged.

Katrina’s Silver Lining: The School Choice Revolution in New Orleans

ReasonTV:

Before hurricane Katrina ravaged the city in 2005, New Orleans had one of the worst performing public school districts in the nation. Katrina forced nearly a million people to leave their homes and caused almost $100 billion in damages. To an already failing public school system, the storm seemed to provide the final deathblow. But then something amazing happened. In the wake of Katrina, education reformers decided to seize the opportunity and start fresh with a system based on choice.

Tenure, RIP: What the Vanishing Status Means for the Future of Education

Robin Wilson:

Some time this fall, the U.S. Education Department will publish a report that documents the death of tenure.
Innocuously titled “Employees in Postsecondary Institutions, Fall 2009,” the report won’t say it’s about the demise of tenure. But that’s what it will show.
Over just three decades, the proportion of college instructors who are tenured or on the tenure track plummeted: from 57 percent in 1975 to 31 percent in 2007. The new report is expected to show that that proportion fell even further in 2009. If you add graduate teaching assistants to the mix, those with some kind of tenure status represent a mere quarter of all instructors.

Andy Grove: How America Can Create Jobs The former Intel chief says “job-centric” leadership and incentives are needed to expand U.S. domestic employment again

Andy Grove:

Friedman is wrong. Startups are a wonderful thing, but they cannot by themselves increase tech employment. Equally important is what comes after that mythical moment of creation in the garage, as technology goes from prototype to mass production. This is the phase where companies scale up. They work out design details, figure out how to make things affordably, build factories, and hire people by the thousands. Scaling is hard work but necessary to make innovation matter.
The scaling process is no longer happening in the U.S. And as long as that’s the case, plowing capital into young companies that build their factories elsewhere will continue to yield a bad return in terms of American jobs.

There has been quite a bit of commentary on Grove’s Bloomberg article online: Bing, Clusty, Google and Yahoo.

Lecturers should provide powerpoint handouts before the lecture

The British Psychological Society:

The common-sense arguments for and against providing students with slide handouts before a lecture are well rehearsed. Having the handouts means students need take fewer notes, therefore allowing them to sit back and actually listen to what’s said. Withholding the handouts, by contrast, entices students to make more notes, perhaps ensuring that they’re more engaged with the lecture material rather than mind-wandering.
Elizabeth Marsh and Holli Sink began their investigation of this issue by surveying university students and lecturers. The student verdict was clear: 74 per cent said they preferred to be given slide handouts prior to the lecture, the most commonly cited reason being that having the handouts helps with note-taking. The lecturers were more equivocal. Fifty per cent said they preferred to provide handouts prior to the lecture, but 21 per cent said they never gave out handouts and 29 per cent preferred to distribute afterwards. The most common lecturer reason for retaining handouts was students wouldn’t pay attention if they had the handouts.

Meet the Principal of Berkeley’s First Charter School

Rachel Gross:

Since the small schools movement in the ’90s, the Bay Area has been something of a petri dish for alternative academics in K-12 education. Oakland, for example, boasts 34 charter schools of various themes and sizes (as well as graduation rates), the first of which was founded in 1993. But until now, Berkeley hasn’t joined the experiment.
Now, to the outcry of some community members and the cheers of others, Berkeley will open its first charter schools, after a proposal for the schools was approved by the Board of Education last month. With a starting budget of just over $3 million, the Revolutionary Education and Learning Movement middle and high schools will open in the fall of 2011. REALM seeks to integrate alternative ways of learning into its curricula, including computer programming, game design and other technology-based projects.

All Joy and No Fun: Why parents hate parenting.

Jennifer Senior:

There was a day a few weeks ago when I found my 2½-year-old son sitting on our building doorstep, waiting for me to come home. He spotted me as I was rounding the corner, and the scene that followed was one of inexpressible loveliness, right out of the movie I’d played to myself before actually having a child, with him popping out of his babysitter’s arms and barreling down the street to greet me. This happy moment, though, was about to be cut short, and in retrospect felt more like a tranquil lull in a slasher film. When I opened our apartment door, I discovered that my son had broken part of the wooden parking garage I’d spent about an hour assembling that morning. This wouldn’t have been a problem per se, except that as I attempted to fix it, he grew impatient and began throwing its various parts at the walls, with one plank very narrowly missing my eye. I recited the rules of the house (no throwing, no hitting). He picked up another large wooden plank. I ducked. He reached for the screwdriver. The scene ended with a time-out in his crib.
As I shuffled back to the living room, I thought of something a friend once said about the Children’s Museum of Manhattan–“a nice place, but what it really needs is a bar”–and rued how, at that moment, the same thing could be said of my apartment. Two hundred and 40 seconds earlier, I’d been in a state of pair-bonded bliss; now I was guided by nerves, trawling the cabinets for alcohol. My emotional life looks a lot like this these days. I suspect it does for many parents–a high-amplitude, high-frequency sine curve along which we get the privilege of doing hourly surfs. Yet it’s something most of us choose. Indeed, it’s something most of us would say we’d be miserable without.

Fewer Low-Income Students Going to College

Emmeline Zhao:

Fewer low- and moderate-income high school graduates are attending college in America, and fewer are graduating.
Enrollment in four-year colleges was 40% in 2004 for low-income students, down from 54% in 1992, and 53% in 2004 for moderate-income students, down from 59% over the same period, according to a report recently submitted to Congress by the Advisory Committee on Student Financial Assistance.
If that trend has continued, low- and moderate-income students who don’t move on to college face an even darker outlook. The unemployment rate for 16- to 19-year olds averaged 17% in 2004, the jobless rate for people over age 25 with just a high school diploma averaged 5% the same year. So far this year, those figures have jumped to 25.8% and 10.6%, respectively.

50 Open Source Tools that Replace Ed Apps

Douglas Crets:

Here is the opening paragraph, which includes a pretty big number, but I don’t know what this writer means by “the educational community”, or what he means by “support and services for open source software by 2012″:

The educational community has discovered open source tools in a big way. Analysts predict that schools will spend up to $489.9 million on support and services for open source software by 2012, and that only includes charges related to operating systems and learning management systems. Teachers, professors and home schoolers are using open source applications as part of their educational curriculum for a wide variety of subjects.

There is no link to the number or to the analysts, so I don’t know from where the information comes. I’d like to say right away that I don’t like that the writer of this blog post is saying that these open source tools “replace” existing tools or software. I don’t think there is any way for one person to measure that. I think it is helpful, though, to say that these open source tools may work well in cooperation with existing software, or as accents for software that already exists.

College Grad Sues Father to Recoup Tuition Costs

Christian Nolan:

Breach of contract action focuses on written contract requiring divorced father to cover daughter’s school costs until age 25
It’s not news that some children, especially as they hit their teenage and college years, don’t get along with their parents. But even experienced attorneys say it’s rare when the disagreements grow to a point where litigation is required.
So consider the odd case of Dana Soderberg, who went to court to force her father to live up to a deal to pay her tuition at Southern Connecticut State University. Hamden family lawyer Renee C. Berman handled the lawsuit for Soderberg.

What the Seattle Superintendent wants to talk about

Charlie Mas:

In a recent Seattle Times interview, Dr. Maria Goodloe-Johnson said:

“We don’t have charter schools. So let’s put that over there, and let’s talk about something else. How about kids being successful, how about kids being challenged? How about providing interventions to close the achievement gap?”

Okay. Let’s talk about those things.
How about kids being successful and challenged? Under Dr. Goodloe-Johnson’s administration, what changes have we seen? On the good side we have seen more AP classes in the high schools that didn’t have many before. We have certainly seen more students taking AP classes. That’s in the high schools. What have we seen in K-8? More schools have been designated as ALOs, but there is no quality assurance so we don’t know if there is anything there beyond the official designation. That’s particularly true with Spectrum programs.

Is outsourcing community college education serving students?

Michael Hiltzik:

It’s not unusual for government agencies with budget problems to start outsourcing services to private industry.
Computer maintenance, prison management, landscaping — all are among the services that state or local bureaucrats have handed off to private firms over the years.
What about college education? It turns out that California is trying to outsource our public higher education system to the for-profit college industry. What is surprising is that this is happening without any evidence that the affected students would be well served.

Study shows teens benefit from later school day

Lindsey Tanner:

Giving teens 30 extra minutes to start their school day leads to more alertness in class, better moods, less tardiness, and even healthier breakfasts, a small study found.
“The results were stunning. There’s no other word to use,” said Patricia Moss, academic dean at the Rhode Island boarding school where the study was done. “We didn’t think we’d get that much bang for the buck.”
The results appear in July’s Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine. The results mirror those at a few schools that have delayed starting times more than half an hour.
Researchers say there’s a reason why even 30 minutes can make a big difference. Teens tend to be in their deepest sleep around dawn — when they typically need to arise for school. Interrupting that sleep can leave them groggy, especially since they also tend to have trouble falling asleep before 11 p.m.

To Stop Cheats, Colleges Learn Their Trickery

Trip Gabriel:

The frontier in the battle to defeat student cheating may be here at the testing center of the University of Central Florida.
No gum is allowed during an exam: chewing could disguise a student’s speaking into a hands-free cellphone to an accomplice outside.
The 228 computers that students use are recessed into desk tops so that anyone trying to photograph the screen — using, say, a pen with a hidden camera, in order to help a friend who will take the test later — is easy to spot.
Scratch paper is allowed — but it is stamped with the date and must be turned in later.
When a proctor sees something suspicious, he records the student’s real-time work at the computer and directs an overhead camera to zoom in, and both sets of images are burned onto a CD for evidence.

Adult education for the 21st century

Susan Aldridge:

I have had the pleasure of handing diplomas to some unusual people at commencement. Still, it was startling to see the child walk toward me. He was 9. He looked younger.
He wasn’t accepting the diploma for himself, of course. It was for his dad, on active duty in Iraq. He’d sent his son, living on a base in Germany, to get it for him.
“Congratulations,” I said. He and his dad deserved it.
At University of Maryland University College (UMUC), our graduates are America’s adult learners. Almost all work full time. Half are parents. Their diplomas often reflect the work, sacrifice — and triumph — of an entire family.

How they teach math in MMSD middle school

via a kind reader. Related: Connected Math, Math Forum audio/video, the successful Seattle Discovery Math lawsuit and the Madison School District Math Task Force (SIS links).

The Sexual Revolution and Children How the Left Took Things Too Far

Jan Fleischhauer and Wiebke Hollersen:

Germany’s left has its own tales of abuse. One of the goals of the German 1968 movement was the sexual liberation of children. For some, this meant overcoming all sexual inhibitions, creating a climate in which even pedophilia was considered progressive.
In the spring of 1970, Ursula Besser found an unfamiliar briefcase in front of her apartment door. It wasn’t that unusual, in those days, for people to leave things at her door or drop smaller items into her letter slot. She was, after all, a member of the Berlin state parliament for the conservative Christian Democrats. Sometimes Besser called the police to examine a suspicious package; she was careful to always apologize to the neighbors for the commotion.
The students had proclaimed a revolution, and Besser, the widow of an officer, belonged to those forces in the city that were sharply opposed to the radical changes of the day. Three years earlier, when she was a newly elected member of the Berlin state parliament, the CDU had appointed Besser, a Ph.D. in philology, to the education committee. She quickly acquired a reputation for being both direct and combative.
The briefcase contained a stack of paper — the typewritten daily reports on educational work at an after-school center in Berlin’s Kreuzberg neighborhood, where up to 15 children aged 8 to 14 were taken care of during the afternoon. The first report was dated Aug. 13, 1969, and the last one was written on Jan. 14, 1970.

School hero not taking job loss quietly

Karen Heller:

At South Philadelphia High School on Dec. 3, when the school dissolved in racial violence, the community-relations liaison not once, but twice, put herself in harm’s way protecting Asian American students from being pummeled by rampaging mobs.
Seven students were hospitalized, though not one of the charges Sutton-Lawson so vigorously defended.
Citizens sent her thank-you cards. Elected officials offered commendations. Business leaders presented gift certificates.
The Philadelphia School District, she says, did virtually nothing.
Two weeks ago, Sutton-Lawson received the ultimate indignity. She was laid off.
“I was totally shocked. I felt like I was trying to make a difference in that school,” says Sutton-Lawson, 58, who worked with students who were pregnant and new mothers. “I got nervous. I got sick inside. I got scared about losing my health insurance.”

Whatever Happened to No Child Left Behind?

Kevin Carey:

Earlier this week I hopped on the Red Line in the middle of the afternoon to attend a screening of the education reform documentary Waiting for Superman at the Gallery Place movie theater downtown. It’s a resonant, skillfully made film, a pitch-perfect representation of education reform in 2010. And arguably the most striking aspect was the near-total absence of No Child Left Behind, which is mentioned only in passing as one more failed federal plan.
This reinforced an idea that’s been nagging me for a while now: Some time in the last two or three years, we moved into the post-NCLB era of education reform.
It didn’t used to be that way. When I began working on education policy full-time in the early 2000’s, the center of gravity in education reform sat with the coalition of civil rights advocates, business leaders, and reform-minded governors of both parties who pushed NCLB through Congress in 2001. To find that same hum of ideas and influence today, you’d head straight for the annual New Schools Venture Fund Summit and its confluence of charter school operators, TFA alumni, urban reformers, philanthropies, and various related “edupreneurs.” It’s a different world with a different mindset, and this has real implications for public schools.

Forget grade levels, KC schools try something new

Heather Hollingsworth:

Forget about students spending one year in each grade, with the entire class learning the same skills at the same time. Districts from Alaska to Maine are taking a different route.
Instead of simply moving kids from one grade to the next as they get older, schools are grouping students by ability. Once they master a subject, they move up a level. This practice has been around for decades, but was generally used on a smaller scale, in individual grades, subjects or schools.
Now, in the latest effort to transform the bedraggled Kansas City, Mo. schools, the district is about to become what reform experts say is the largest one to try the approach. Starting this fall officials will begin switching 17,000 students to the new system to turnaround trailing schools and increase abysmal tests scores.

3 Eras of Education

Tom Vander Ark:

Here’s a good quick read: Rethinking Education in the Age of Technology: The Digital Revolution and Schooling in America (Teachers College, 2009), Allan Collins & Richard Halverson. Doug’s post on three evolutions reminded me of chapter 6 of Rethinking: The Three Eras of Education. With some additions here’s a summary of the current industrial-era education, what was before, and what’s next.

K-12 Tax & Spending Climate: Wisconsin State and Local Debt Rose Faster Than Federal Debt During 1990-2009 Average Annual Increase in State Debt, 7.8%; Local Debt, 7.3%

WISTAX:

State and local debt in Wisconsin grew faster than federal debt over the last 19 years. State debt rose 316%, an average of 7.8% per year, from $2.71 billion in 1990 to $11.25 billion in 2009. Local general obligation debt was up 284%, a 7.3% average, from $3.41 billion in 1989 to $13.1 billion in 2008. Federal debt held by the public averaged annual increases of 6.2% per year for a total increase of 212.8% from 1990 through 2009. The figures come from a new study from the Wisconsin Taxpayers Alliance (WISTAX), a nonprofit, nonpartisan public policy research organization dedicated to citizen education.
Governments borrow for many reasons, including buildings, roads, sewers, and environmental cleanup. However, WISTAX researchers found that about 40% of the state increase was due to $1.6 billion of tobacco bonds issued in fiscal 2002 that were funded by a stream of payments from tobacco companies, as well as $1.8 billion in appropriation bonds issued in fiscal 2004 to pay unfunded state pension and sick-leave liabilities. The tobacco bonds were issued to help balance the 2001-03 state budget. The bonds were refinanced in fiscal 2009, generating an additional $300 million that was used to balance the 2008-09 general fund. Originally expected to be paid off in 2018, the refinanced bonds will not be paid off until 2029.

Reality check on school accountability movement

Dave Russell:

t is time to end the childhood obesity epidemic once and for all.
Obesity decreases a child’s quality of life and longevity. It contributes to a host of medical conditions and costs our country millions each year. Childhood obesity is preventable and our country should take responsibility for helping all children achieve a healthy weight.
My proposal will guarantee that no child will be obese by the time they graduate from high school. This will be accomplished by simply holding schools as well as health and physical education teachers accountable for insuring that all students reach or maintain a healthy weight before graduating high school.
Before I begin, let’s address all the naysayers whose excuses will be endless.

Dane County African American Community Forum on Thursday, July 8

via a Kaleem Caire email:

Greetings.
We want to remind you that the Urban League of Greater Madison is hosting a forum with members of Dane County’s African American community on Thursday, July 8, 2010 from 5:30pm – 7:30pm CST at our new headquarters (2222 South Park Street, Madison 53713) to discuss ways the Urban League can support the education and employment needs and aspirations of African American children, youth, and adults in greater Madison. We would like to hear the African American community’s opinions and ideas about strategies the Urban League can pursue to dramatically:
· Increase the academic achievement, high school graduation, and college goings rates of African American children and youth;
· decrease poverty rates and increase the number of African American adults who are employed and moving into the middle class; and
· increase the number of African Americans who are serving and employed in leadership roles in Dane County’s public and private sector.
If you have not already RSVP’d, please contact Ms. Isheena Murphy of the Urban League at 608-729-1200 or via email at imurphy@ulgm.org. We will serve light refreshments and begin promptly at 5:30pm CST.
We look forward to listening, learning, and helping to manifest opportunity for all in Dane County.
________________________________________
Kaleem Caire
President & CEO
Urban League of Greater Madison
2222 South Park Street, Suite 200
Madison, WI 53713
Main: 608-729-1200
Assistant: 608-729-1249
Fax: 608-729-1205
Email: kcaire@ulgm.org
Internet: www.ulgm.org
Facebook:

Related: Poverty and Education Forum.

The Pitfalls in Identifying a Gifted Child

New York Times
Thirty-seven states have some sort of mandate to address the needs of gifted and talented students in public schools. While many parents and teachers have mixed views about the tests used to identify talent and “giftedness,” the programs are strongly supported by many parents who cannot afford to send their children to private schools. They are hard to overhaul, for various reasons.
In New York City, officials are seeking a new exam for admissions of gifted students that may involve testing children as young as 3. The city says it is responding to complaints that minorities are underrepresented in the current selection process and that many parents have learned to game the system. Is New York’s approach a step forward or backward? What does the latest research show in identifying gifted and talented students?

Alameda School Tax Referendum “Measure E” Fails

Jill Tucker:

For decades, parents have shelled out a real estate premium to take advantage of Alameda public schools, spending more money for rent or a mortgage for the peace of mind that comes with solid standardized test scores and a seat at the school down the block.
That’s what Heather Genschmer did.
She wanted her son Myles, 3, to have the public school experience she had as a child, one filled with art, music, gifted programs, field trips, sports and high-quality academics.

Related: “Measure E, What Went Wrong” and “No on Measure E“. More here. The Alameda School District’s website.
Alameda’s enrollment was 9,612 in 2009/2010. Spending was 92,010,693 in 2009/2010 = $9,572 per student. Locally, Madison spent $15,241 per student, based on the 2009/2010 Citizen’s budget ($370,287,471 expenditures for 24,295 students), 37% more than Alameda.

Only 18 UK teachers have been struck off for incompetence in the past 40 years

BBC:

This is despite ex-chief inspector of UK schools, Chris Woodhead, estimating some 15,000 are not up to the job.
Some bad teachers are moved between schools, rather than having their competency challenged, it has emerged.
Teaching unions dispute the claims. The General Teaching Council for England, which investigates complaints, says the number of poor teachers is “not clear”.
However, the GTC admits the suggestion that the 18 struck off represented the total number of incompetent teachers in the system is not credible.
Two years ago, its chief executive Keith Bartley said there could be as many as 17,000 “substandard” teachers among the 500,000 registered teachers in the UK.

Bill Cosby on education, responsibility at Essence

Chevel Johnson:

Bill Cosby used his trademark humor and storytelling style to chide hundreds gathered Saturday at the Essence Music Festival’s empowerment seminars into talking to their children about real life and, in the process, keeping it simple.
“We’ve got to lay it out for them,” Cosby said when asked about how to help cut the rate of teen pregnancies in America. “Let’s tell them about life. You’re 14 and having sex. OK. So, what kind of job do you have?”
Cosby, who received a standing ovation when he walked on stage, said the African-American community must get involved if change is going to occur in any area.

Understanding Milwaukee’s teacher layoffs

Wisconsin Taxpayer’s Alliance:

According to a front-page story in the local daily, the Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS) could lay off as many as 482 teachers, mostly young staff, “while other large districts are predicting far fewer cuts.” Rhetorical explanations for why this is happening abound. But published statistics point to concrete reasons for the pending actions.
Rhetorical reasons
Key political players in the controversy offered quick explanations for the layoffs. The MPS school board president cited union reluctance to switch to lower-cost health insurance. Union leaders blamed inadequate state and federal funding. And young teachers complained they were laid off “because of experience, and not performance.” Most union contracts have seniority provisions requiring that the last teacher hired–often a young teacher–is the first fired.

GREATER FOOLS: Financial Illiteracy

James Surowiecki:

Halfway through his Presidency, George W. Bush called on the country to build “an ownership society.” He trumpeted the soaring rate of U.S. homeownership, and extolled the virtues of giving individuals more control over their own financial lives. It was a comforting vision, but, as we now know, behind it was a bleak reality–bad subprime loans, mountains of credit-card debt, and shrinking pensions–reflecting a simple fact: when it comes to financial matters, many Americans have been left without a clue.
The depth of our financial ignorance is startling. In recent years, Annamaria Lusardi, an economist at Dartmouth and the head of the Financial Literacy Center, has conducted extensive studies of what Americans know about finance. It’s depressing work. Almost half of those surveyed couldn’t answer two questions about inflation and interest rates correctly, and slightly more sophisticated topics baffle a majority of people. Many people don’t know the terms of their mortgage or the interest rate they’re paying. And, at a time when we’re borrowing more than ever, most Americans can’t explain what compound interest is.
Financial illiteracy isn’t new, but the consequences have become more severe, because people now have to take so much responsibility for their financial lives. Pensions have been replaced with 401(k)s; many workers have to buy their own health insurance; and so on. The financial marketplace, meanwhile, has become a dizzying emporium of choice and easy credit. The decisions are more numerous and complex than ever before. As Lusardi puts it, “It’s like we’ve opened a faucet, and told people they can draw as much water as they want, and it’s up to them to decide when they’ve had enough. But we haven’t given people the tools to decide how much is too much.”

NEA Convention 2010: Up for Debate

Mike Antonucci:

NBI 6 – “NEA shall seek a cease and desist agreement from AFT instructing its local Affiliates in Alabama to stop their attempted raids each year.”
NBI 20 – “NEA requests Arne Duncan and the Department of Education to immediately implement the decade old recommendation that the ‘achievement levels’ of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) not be published this year.

Fascinating….
Related, by Sam Dillon: Teachers’ Union Shuns Obama Aides at Convention

Schools with many AP tests but lousy scores

Jay Matthews:

We education watchers are gradually waking up to the fact that a very small but growing number of educators are using Advanced Placement, originally designed for only the best high schools, as a shock treatment to improve instruction at some of our worst high schools.
This is not, to say the least, a well-understood trend. Some of the smartest AP people in the country do not like it. Others do. I think it has great potential benefits, but it is too soon to draw solid conclusions. So I have appointed myself the unofficial scorekeeper for such schools, and have created a special category for them — what I call the Catching Up schools — in my annual Challenge Index ratings. This includes my ranked list of all public high schools in the Washington area, published in The Washington Post, and a separate list of schools nationally that have the highest AP test participation rates, best known as America’s Best High Schools in Newsweek.com.
I am giving this such attention because when I have looked at schools using this wild approach, it seems to be working for them. Students and parents like the challenge and don’t care if they are unlikely to pass many of the tests. The teachers are energized. The fears of critics that using AP with low-performing students will create false expectations and low self esteem seem unfounded.

Don’t Know Much About History?

Marist Poll:

There’s good news for American education. About three-quarters of residents — 74% — know the U.S. declared its independence from Great Britain in 1776. The bad news for the academic system — 26% do not. This 26% includes one-fifth who are unsure and 6% who thought the U.S. separated from another nation. That begs the question, “From where do the latter think the U.S. achieved its independence?” Among the countries mentioned are France, China, Japan, Mexico, and Spain.

Valerie Strauss has more.

National Indian Education Study

National Center for Education Statistics:

The National Indian Education Study (NIES) is a two-part study designed to describe the condition of education for American Indian and Alaska Native students in the United States. The study is sponsored by the Office of Indian Education (OIE) and conducted by the National Center for Education Statistics for the U.S. Department of Education. A Technical Review Panel, whose members included American Indian and Alaska Native educators and researchers from across the country, helped design the study.

NIES was authorized under the 2004 Executive Order 13336. The purpose of this order was to assist American Indian/Alaska Native students in meeting the challenging student achievement standards set forth in the Elementary and Secondary Education Act reauthorized in 2001.

Part I of the NIES provides in-depth information on the academic performance of fourth- and eighth-grade American Indian and Alaska Native students on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) in mathematics and reading.

Don’t burn Jamie Oliver over school dinners

Rose Prince:

It is agreed, then, that bad eating habits are a government problem. Up to now, you would have been forgiven for thinking that all social ills are to be cured by television presenters. Then this week, the Health Secretary took Jamie Oliver and his well-intentioned – if sadly ineffective – efforts to reform school dinners to task. Take-up of meals is down, argued Andrew Lansley, suggesting that Jamie’s formula for school dinner reform is not working. I would suggest Andrew Lansley aims his guns in a different direction.
Oliver has often talked of his frustration and, indeed, has even burst into tears at the refusal of sinners to convert to his way of eating, or stay faithful afterwards. But their diets are not his fault, or his responsibility. He valiantly highlighted an important issue. Millions watched; the previous government made a lot of the right noises, but they never ran with Oliver’s campaign.

Wisconsin education policy, like kudzu, is overgrown: Standards Based Accountability in Wisconsin

Alan Borsuk:

Kudzu? Who dares compare Wisconsin’s education policies to kudzu?
Christopher Brown, a professor in curriculum and instruction at the University of Texas at Austin, that’s who.
Kudzu is a plant that originated in Asia. Agriculture officials in the U.S. encouraged its use, starting in the 1930s, as a low cost way to stem soil erosion. But, especially in the South, it spread rapidly and far beyond intended areas. It became regarded as a weed.
Hmm. Launched with good intentions, appealing as an easy option, it grew rapidly and accomplished little. That sums up Brown’s analysis of Wisconsin education policy from the late 1980s to the early 2000s. In his observations there lie major lessons for those who want to raise the expectations of students in Wisconsin and see more students meet those expectations.
Someone recently pointed me to Brown’s analysis, which started as a doctoral dissertation while he was at the University of Wisconsin-Madison a few years ago. Just the title of the version published in 2008 in the academic journal Educational Policy made me laugh – and wince:

Clusty Search: Christopher P. Brown.

Promoting Madison’s Midvale Elementary’s Dual Language Immersion Program

Midvale Elementary School Madison WI 7/4/2010 by Jim Zellmer Promoting Dual Language Immersion

I did not immediately see any reference to the dual language program on Midvale/Lincoln’s website. This Madison School District search offers a bit more information.

President Obama’s school-reform programs are falling victim to the teachers’ unions.

Jonathan Alter:

For more than 40 years, Rep. David Obey of Wisconsin, the third-ranking member of the House, has been a fiery and highly effective legislator. Any history of how the country avoided another depression must include Obey, who shepherded the $787 billion Recovery Act through Congress last year with great skill (and no earmarks). He has been an inspiring antiwar liberal dating back to Vietnam and a rare man of conscience in Washington.
But Obey, who is retiring at the end of the year, is in danger of going out as a water carrier for the teachers’ unions–the man who gutted President Obama’s signature program on education, Race to the Top.
At issue is a $10 billion bill (down from $23 billion) to help states prevent devastating teacher layoffs. (The House approved the bill after this column was written on Thursday.) Without the money, we’ll see larger class size, four-day school weeks in more areas, and about 100,000 lost jobs, which in turn will strain services and harm the economy. As if the politics weren’t byzantine enough, the anti-layoff money has been attached to a bill funding the war in Afghanistan. This was meant to make it easier to win the support of war supporters, but House Speaker Nancy Pelosi now has to deal with House liberals who like the money for teachers, but not for the war.

Kids’ books: Winners of Newbery, Caldecott medals share their inspiration

Karen MacPherson:

“Inspirational” is the best word to describe the American Library Association’s annual summer conference, at least for lovers of children’s and teen literature.
For the ALA’s summer meeting is the time when the authors and illustrators who have won the organization’s top awards — the Newbery and Caldecott Medals, as well as a host of others — come and give their acceptance speeches.
The speeches are consistently thought-provoking and thoughtful, as authors and illustrators assess how the creative process, coupled with their life experiences, have brought them to the point of winning a top children’s-literature award.
Two of the best speeches are invariably given by the winners of the Caldecott and Newbery Medals, and this year was no exception.

Melissa Westbrook has more.

Minn. high school graduate inspired to paint

The Associated Press:

Inspired by the realist style of Edward Hopper, recent Century High School graduate Ali Sifuentes snapped a few nighttime photographs of Silver Lake Foods on north Broadway hoping to recreate the scene in an oil painting.
“I’ve been by there many times and after studying the building I thought I’d try to recreate the cinematic contrast between light and dark colors,” Sifuentes said. “The building has a fantasy sort of feel and it seemed ideal for this style of painting.”
Sifuentes believes Hopper, a well-known American artist that often focused on urban and rural scenes depicting modern American life, was sending a message about himself and people of his time.
“I’m basically trying to do the same thing, only I’m showing what the present looks like,” Sifuentes said.

Program Accreditation Matters Too

Ben Miller:

Imagine that after paying $17,000 for a brand new car you found out that it cannot take any fuel that is available at gas stations and that modifying the car so it can use regular gasoline will cost almost about half what the card did. You’d be pretty upset right?
Well that’s the exact situation students find themselves in when they enroll in at an accredited university only to find out later that their course of study doesn’t have program accreditation or state approval.
There are two types of accreditation. The most common kind is regional or national accreditation, in which an entire institution is reviewed to check its finances, academic programs, and other things. Winning approval under this process allows a school to participate in the federal student aid programs. It also lends a strong degree of credibility to an institution since it indicates an outside acknowledgment of legitimacy.
While general institutional accreditation works for most subject areas, some technical or vocational offerings also require their own programmatic or specialized, accreditation. Graduating from an accredited program is frequently a requirement for taking the recognized licensing test in that field. For example, with most law schools need to be accredited by the American Bar Association so that students can sit for the bar exam and be practicing lawyers. It’s a similar story with medical and dental school.

Education Reform Stalls? Do Not (David) Obey

Jonathan Chait:

The recession is forcing states to raise taxes and cut budgets, including education budgets, which is a wildly stupid national policy both on short-term economic grounds and in terms of investing in future human capital. The responses to this crisis have been maddeningly short-sighted. On the right, and even the center, you have self-styled deficit hawks cheering state-level Hooverism. (The Washington Post editorial page opposes any federal aid to cushion education firings unless states first overhaul their hiring practices, which is of course impossible in that time frame.)
Now on the left you’re seeing an equally maddening response. House Appropriations Committee chairman David Obey proposes to fund money for saving teachers by cutting back funding for the Obama administration’s wildly effective “Race to the Top” program, which provides incentives to states that reform their education policy. Obey’s spokesman explains:

“Mr. Obey has said, ‘When a ship is sinking, you don’t worry about redesigning a room, you worry about keeping it afloat,’ ” Brachman said. “He is not opposed to education reform. But he believes that keeping teachers on the job is an important step.”

Diane Marrero has more along with Valerie Strauss.

Charters, teachers vie to take over L.A. Unified schools

Howard Blume:

The district is inviting bidders to run poorly performing and new campuses with 35,000 students. More than 80 groups submitted letters of intent for new or low-achieving schools for fall 2011.
The nation’s second-largest school system is once again inviting bidders to take over poorly performing and new campuses, in a school-control process that is, once again, pitting teachers and their union against independently operated charter schools, most of which are nonunion.
Teachers working for the Los Angeles Unified School District put in bids for every school. And charters are vying for all but one.
At stake is the education of more than 35,000 students who will attend those schools.

International Program Catches On in U.S. Schools

Tamar Lewin:

The alphabet soup of college admissions is getting more complicated as the International Baccalaureate, or I.B., grows in popularity as an alternative to the better-known Advanced Placement program.
The College Board’s A.P. program, which offers a long menu of single-subject courses, is still by far the most common option for giving students a head start on college work, and a potential edge in admissions.
The lesser-known I.B., a two-year curriculum developed in the 1960s at an international school in Switzerland, first took hold in the United States in private schools. But it is now offered in more than 700 American high schools — more than 90 percent of them public schools — and almost 200 more have begun the long certification process.

The Madison Country Day School has been recently accredited as an IB World School.
Rick Kiley emailed this link: The Truth about IB

Did Jamie Oliver’s School Lunch Program Make Kids Eat Junk Food?

Megan Friedman:

What happens when you force kids to eat healthy food at school? They find a way to down junk food anyway. That’s what the U.K.’s health minister is accusing celebrity chef Jamie Oliver of causing with his attempt to rid cafeterias of unhealthy lunches. (via Wellness)
Oliver is best known in the U.S. for his show Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution, in which he attempted to get a West Virginia town to eat more healthfully. He had previously started a program in the U.K. called School Dinners, with a similar goal. Unfortunately, the result may not have worked out as planned. Wellness sums it up:

Gray outlines his agenda for education in Washington, DC

Bill Turque & Nikita Stewart:

Calling the Fenty administration’s approach to education reform “shortsighted, narrow and sometimes secretive,” D.C. Council Chairman Vincent C. Gray unveiled a blueprint Thursday to guide education policy if he is elected mayor.
The plan promises more transparency, funding equity for public charter schools, tax credits for early-childhood programs and greater support for the city’s neighborhood high schools.
Educators, students and supporters filled the library at Thurgood Marshall Academy, a public charter high school in Southeast, where Gray outlined an ambitious plan and tried to further distinguish himself from Mayor Adrian M. Fenty, who has made public schools one of his priorities.
Gray, who is challenging Fenty for the Democratic nomination for mayor, said he gives “tremendous credit” to Fenty for calling attention to the need for education reform. But “what we’ve learned over the past three years is that it’s not enough to have mayoral control. What we need, ladies and gentlemen, is mayoral leadership,” he said to hearty applause.

Students Know

Douglas Crets:

Does online learning help you with your strengths and weaknesses? Rick says, “I needed help with writing, and it works very well.”
What makes people choose one school over another? Or, choose to go to virtual school? Sydney, “As a general statement, when anyone esee the world laptop, they say ‘I want to go to that school.’ Besides that, I like it because it’s a new school. We were going into a new setting, nobody knew each other.”
How do laptops help you learn? Sydney: “It’s obvious that laptops and textbooks are two different things. Time is evoloving and so is technology. You can look up so much more. You can see more than what you are already given.”
Aaron, “We are able to check our grades 24/7. I can see what I scored immediately.”

Math Geek Mom: On not sitting it out

Rosemarie Emanuele:

Labor economists have an interesting way of looking at leisure time, and it should not come as a surprise to anyone at this time of the year. We call most things that we can buy “normal goods”, because more income generally leads us to buy more of such things. Along these lines, we recognize that leisure is actually a “normal good”, and something that is desired and, in a sense, “purchased” when we take time out to enjoy ourselves rather than use that time to work and earn money. Such a view of leisure leads to the result that it is possible that, as wages increase, people will use that increased income to buy more leisure. Thus, while one normally thinks of increasing wages as leading to people working more, it is possible that higher wages could actually cause people to work less, as the potentially increased income from higher wages is used to “purchase” more leisure time. This is a theoretical possibility called the “backward bending labor supply curve.” I found myself thinking of this last weekend as I splashed in the city pool with my daughter, and could well imagine a world in which I would want to use every extra penny to buy such warm summer weekends with my family.
When we adopted my daughter, we put together a CD of songs that had special meaning to us and called it “Waiting for our Daughter”, with the intention of giving it to her some day, so she could capture some of the emotion of that moment. Included in it were songs that were popular in the months leading up to her adoption, as well songs that had special meaning to us, such as “Return to Pooh Corner”, which still makes me, a lifelong Pooh fan, cry. Also included in the CD was the song “I Hope You Dance”. Its refrain sings “when you get the choice to sit it out or dance, I hope you dance”. I see it as a song that reflects the life affirming joy that I want to pass on to my child.