School Information System – Page 331 – Curated Education Information

Midterm Election Survey

54% of Insiders say the Republican win in the Senate will make post-secondary education a higher priority.

Exactly half of Insiders think Senate newcomers are unlikely to impact education policy or it’s too soon to tell. Echoing October’s report, Insiders said Lamar Alexander will “lead the charge.”

Education Insiders express slight optimism that both K12 and higher education policies will become higher priorities with Republican control of the Senate, though agreement between the President and Congress is unlikely. Insiders see attention gainful employment regulations as a possible area of focus.

Insiders repeatedly cite Senator Lamar Alexander, the presumptive chair of the HELP committee, as the key driving force behind both K12 and higher education legislation in the Senate. With the political winds in his favor, Alexander may have the support he needs to gain traction on key education policies. But Insiders do not see the newly elected senators as having a great impact on education policy.

Madison Superintendent’s Perspective

Jennifer Cheatham:

Our strategy is no longer a laundry list of ever-changing “initiatives,” but instead a set of inter-related, long-term work aimed at eliminating the gaps in opportunity that lead to disparities in achievement.

It is directly focused on the day-to-day work of great teaching and learning. Put differently, our strategy directly impacts the daily work of teachers in a way that other efforts that have focused on the classroom periphery have not.

To be successful, this strategy requires us to continually monitor our progress, respond to issues as they arise, and manage the natural stages and pace of change.

As a district, we conduct a deep review of progress once a quarter — that first review is scheduled for this month. This process provides a space for us — school based leadership teams, central office, and board — to examine both implementation and outcomes, process concerns and questions from our staff, families and community, and to make adjustments, even major shifts in direction, if necessary.

If we use this process the way it was designed, we’ll continually identify strengths and challenges, understand root causes, collaboratively problem solve and chart our course forward.

Jennifer Cheatham.

“Plenty of Resources”.

Seeing Red: Stanford v. Harvard

Meg Bernhard:

STANFORD, Calif.—Stanford buzzes. Walk across any of the 8,000-plus acres of earthy-red tiles and dusty, rolling hills of the university’s grounds and you’ll find yourself dodging hundreds of bicycles, whose moving gears and wheels make the campus hum.

More than 13,000 bikes belonging to students and faculty traverse campus daily, according to the school’s website, and it’s no wonder why. Stanford University, a massive tract of land that occupies what was once Leland Stanford’s Palo Alto Stock Farm, is its own city, so large it requires an individual zip code.

In a way, the constant motion of Stanford’s bikers is indicative of the university’s dynamism. Even the university’s motto, “Die Luft der Freiheit weht”—or, “The Winds of Freedom Blow”—nods at Stanford’s focus on the cutting-edge of research and education in the 21st century.

Thousands of bikes decorate the Stanford campus.

Fired school leaders get big payouts

Melanie Gutierrez:

A former Union City superintendent took home more than $600,000 last year, making her the top earner on a new online database tracking salary and benefit information for California public school employees.

Kari McVeigh, former superintendent of New Haven Unified School District in Union City, and two other superintendents from the Bay Area were among the highest-paid school employees in the state last year in large part because they were fired and received six-figure severance payouts, according to a Chronicle analysis of pay data recently made public by the state Controller’s Office.

The data shows that both small and large public school districts awarded administrators six-figure salaries, sometimes with lifetime health benefits, low- or no-interest home loans and golden parachutes, even as California emerged from a financial crisis that forced huge cuts to social service programs for the poor and elderly.

Too Many Kids Quit Science Because They Don’t Think They’re Smart

Alexandra Osola:

For most students, science, math, engineering, and technology (STEM) subjects are not intuitive or easy. Learning in general—and STEM in particular—requires repeated trial and error, and a student’s lack of confidence can sometimes stand in her own way. And although teachers and parents may think they are doing otherwise, these adults inadvertently help kids make up their minds early on that they’re not natural scientists or “math people,” which leads them to pursue other subjects instead.

So what’s the best way to help kids feel confident enough to stay the STEM course? To answer this question, I spoke with Carol Dweck, a professor of psychology at Stanford University in California. Over the past 20 years, Dweck has conducted dozens of studies about praise’s impact on students’ self-esteem and academic achievement. Here is a transcript of our conversation, which has been condensed and lightly edited.

Alexandra Ossola: What sparked your interest in this field?

The Changing Profile of Student Borrowers Biggest Increase in Borrowing Has Been Among More Affluent Students

Richard Fry:

Share of College Graduates From High-Income Families who Borrow Has DoubledIn 2012, a record share of the nation’s new college graduates (69%) had taken out student loans to finance their education, and the typical amount they had borrowed was more than twice that of college graduates 20 years ago. A new Pew Research Center analysis of recently released government data finds that the increase in the rate of borrowing over the past two decades has been much greater among graduates from more affluent families than among those from low-income families. Fully half of the 2012 graduates from high-income families borrowed money for college, double the share that borrowed in 1992-93.1

The rise in the rate of borrowing was also substantial among upper-middle-income graduates, with 62% of 2012 graduates from upper-middle-income households leaving college with debt, compared with 34% roughly 20 years ago.

Somewhat related: Wisconsin Governor Walker on the student loan crisis. Walker’s comments on the Doyle era mirror my limited experience.

The best thing parents can do for schools

Lisa Grey:

I’m the parent of a public school student myself. So I know how much parents want to help.

American parents are more involved in the schools than ever before — much more so than in other countries.

I followed three American kids who studied as foreign exchange students in Finland, South Korea and Poland. You didn’t see parents at those schools. They weren’t coaching soccer or accompanying classes on field trips. I didn’t see those kinds of extracurricular activities. Instead, the parents were involved at home, working directly with their child’s education.

Research shows that it’s much more impactful to prioritize learning at home over community-building activities.

There’s this amazing study: The more time that parents spent on extracurriculars in a country’s schools, the worse the kids did in reading. It’s shocking.

Five-year high schools challenge the K-12 model

Tim Nesbitt:

For years now, some school districts in Oregon have been allowing their high school seniors who are ready to graduate stay for another year, letting them take community college courses on the school district’s dime and bolstering their budgets with an extra year of state funding. Are these districts taking unfair advantage of the state’s school funding system? Maybe, but they are doing something that other districts should emulate for its purpose, creativity and results.

Critics contend that districts which offer extended high school programs have been helping themselves to a larger and unfair share of the state school fund, which provides funding for students until receipt of a diploma. (Restrictions kick in at ages 20 and 21.) Dallas High School enrolls 25 percent of last year’s senior class in its Extended Campus Program with Chemeketa Community College. Those students have earned the credits needed for a high school diploma. But, by postponing the award of their diplomas, the district can claim state funding averaging $6,500 for each of them – enough to pay for a full load of community college courses and provide support from the high school’s counselors as well.

Smaller districts like Lebanon and Redmond have copied the Dallas program. But, if any of Oregon’s large urban districts were to follow suit, they would spark a run on the K-12 bank. Suppose 25 percent of all high school seniors in Oregon were to opt into a program of this kind. The state would then have to come up with an extra $70 million a year or districts would have to redistribute that amount from their K-12 classrooms to support these additional students.

Rather than more years, the trend, imho, should be towards a shorter, more rigorous K-12 experience.

The Teachers Unions First Lost The Media; Have They Now Lost Everyone Else, Too?

Andrew J. Rotherham & Richard Whitmire:

This may mark one of the great missed opportunities in education. With a sympathetic president as a partner, national union leaders could have spent the last five years telling their members the truth: The nation’s classrooms are changing fast, now at 50 percent poor and minority students, and our schools are simply not good enough for too many students. So the entire education sector, including teachers, must change as well.

But they didn’t. Instead, union leaders spent the last five years telling their members that change was not necessary. You are blameless, they insisted in their fight against “reformers.” You’re being demonized. Poverty is to blame, not our schools.

Those demanding change, they insisted, are “corporate reformers” out to “privatize” your schools. What’s needed instead, they told their teachers, was a massive digging-in to block those very changes.

Stanford MBA’s shift away from tech

Poets & Quants:

Lured by some of the most exorbitant pay packages ever given to MBAs, Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business made finance once again the industry of choice this year. Nearly three of every ten MBA graduates at Stanford, or 29% of the Class of 2014, accepted job offers in finance, up from 26% last year. So much for all those reports suggesting that finance is out of favor.

The increase, largely due to more acceptances in private equity, investment banking and investment management, came at the expense of the technology industry and consulting. Last year 32% of Stanford’s graduating MBAs rushed into tech. This year, the percentage fell to just 24%. Consulting fell to 16%, down three full percentage points from the 19% who chose to become consultants last year. For the consulting industry, it’s one of the lowest draws out of the Stanford pool ever. Only five years ago, in 2009, 32% of the class headed into the field.

Lies, Damned Lies, and College Admissions

Steve Cohen:

College-application season is shifting into high gear, and with it comes anxiety and abuses—on both sides of the admissions desk. Some wealthy parents will pay private counselors more than $40,000 for “tweaking” their kids’ essays, on the implicit promise that these consultants have connections inside admissions offices, where many once worked. For their part, admissions directors want more applications so that they can reject a higher percentage of qualified kids. By boosting their rejection rates, they improve their school’s position in most rankings. While the current admissions system works well for a small number of colleges and over-achieving kids, for everyone else, the process is broken. Colleges, government, and the media all share in the blame.

Recently, Inside Higher Education, with Gallup’s help, published its annual survey of college- admissions officers. The report was sobering: 93 percent of the college-admissions officers surveyed said they believed colleges lie about key data they report, such as average SAT scores of admitted students. Why? It makes their schools appear more selective, which attracts more applicants. Sixty-five percent of admissions officers said that their institution did not meet its enrollment goals last year.

FL families begin using new parental choice scholarship accounts

Redefined Ed:

One of the nation’s newest parental choice programs is shifting into higher gear.

PLSAFamilies of hundreds of Florida students with significant special needs, including autism, Down syndrome and cerebral palsy, have been given the green light to begin using Personal Learning Scholarship Accounts for the 2014-15 school year.

So far, parents of more than 1,200 students have been awarded PLSAs, which give them the resources and flexibility to access a range of educational services, including private schools, tutors, therapists, curriculum and materials. The Florida program is the second of its kind in the country, and some education policy experts see it and a similar program in Arizona as models for a new wave in parental choice.
– See more at: http://www.redefinedonline.org/2014/11/fl-families-begin-using-new-parental-choice-scholarship-accounts/#sthash.aUCDrsjl.dpuf

Philadelphia Schools: Another Year, Another Budget Crisis (spends $21,425/student)

Claudio Sanchez:

“Lets say you’re an employee making $70,000 a year.” says Stanski. “That’s about a $14,000 payment to your pension fund. It’s just not sustainable and yeah, it worries me tremendously.”

Philadelphia’s school superintendent, William Hite, says the math just doesn’t add up. The district, he says, has seen “years of reductions of revenue, years of spending beyond what the district was taking in — not just over the last two years but for the past decade.”

Marjorie Neff agrees. She’s a former principal and one of five members of the School Reform Commission that took over the district in 2001 to stabilize its finances. Instead, the commission has lurched from one budget shortfall to the next.

It has had to shut down 31 schools and lay off thousands of teachers, reading coaches, librarians, nurses and counselors in the last two years.

97 Percent of Md. Teachers Receive ‘Effective’ Grades

WNEW:

A report card released Tuesday for Maryland public school teachers reveals nearly three percent of those educators are rated ineffective, the Maryland State Department of Education says.

Evaluations completed for the 2013-14 school year show that 97 percent of teachers were rated either “highly effective” or “effective” in the state’s three-tiered rating system.

The majority of those teachers, about 56 percent, were rated effective, while 41 percent received the highly effective rating and almost three percent were found ineffective.

MSDE says schools in the highest quartile for poverty and minorities have more ineffective and fewer highly effective teachers than schools in the lowest quartile for poverty.

Why I Wasn’t Able to Talk to New York City’s Teachers

Joel Klein:

What makes for a great teacher? For generations, educators operated on the belief that great teaching was mostly an art, which the talented refine in the privacy of the classroom over many years of work. Think Sidney Poitier’s Mark Thackeray in To Sir with Love or Richard Dreyfuss as Glenn Holland in Mr. Holland’s Opus. The trouble with this romanticized idea is that it all depends on the individual. Yes, some educators grow and develop on their own initiative. But this model assumes that all teachers will naturally progress and negates the possibility that any educator can be coached or challenged to improve.

And because teaching happens behind closed doors, this conventional wisdom protects less-competent teachers from being assessed and, if necessary, removed. Truly awful teachers can effectively commit malpractice (like bad doctors) against thousands of unsuspecting students throughout a thirty-year career and still collect the same pay, benefits, and pensions as their most effective peers.

Minneapolis’ worst teachers are in the poorest schools, data show

Alejandra Matos:

Minneapolis officials say they’re taking action to balance needs with abilities.

New teacher evaluation data show that Minneapolis schools with the largest number of low-income students have the highest concentration of poor-performing instructors.

Students in the most affluent neighborhoods of the city are far more likely to have the best and most experienced teachers, according to school district records obtained by the Star Tribune.

The new information is emerging as Minneapolis schools are facing federal scrutiny for an achievement gap between white and minority students that is among the worst in the nation.

“It’s alarming that it took this to understand where teachers are,” Superintendent Bernadeia Johnson said Friday. “We probably knew that, but now have the hard evidence. It made me think about how we need to change our staffing and retention.”

Once Sleepy Campaign Issue, Education Gains Clout

Philip Elliott:

Middle school art teacher Cynthia Bliss laced up her sneakers, grabbed a jacket and spent most of a recent Saturday asking strangers to help her oust Republican Gov. Scott Walker from office.

“We’re teachers in the area and this election is very important to us,” Bliss told one voter on the front steps of a house.

“You don’t even have to talk,” the older woman at the door replied. “We’re the choir you’re preaching to.”

Bliss, who teaches in Fort Atkinson, wrote down the answer and marched back to the sidewalk, where autumn leaves crunched underfoot. For her — and hundreds of other Wisconsin teachers — booting Walker from the Capitol has been a priority.

“If Scott Walker wins re-election, he will keep his current policies and put them on steroids,” Bliss said as she walked to the next house. “That’s not acceptable to me.”

Returns on College Endowments Average 15.8. Percent

Tamar Lewin:

The average return, after fees, on college and university endowments was 15.8 percent in the fiscal year that ended in June, up from 11.7 percent the previous year, according to the preliminary data collected for the annual Nacubo-Commonfund Study of Endowments, which will be released in January. The largest endowments — those over $1 billion — had the highest average return, 16.8 percent. The study, based on data from 426 colleges, found that colleges were allocating more than half their investments — and almost two-thirds of the largest endowments — to alternative strategies such as hedge funds and private equity.

State Education Rankings

Dr. Matthew Ladner & Dave Myslinski:

The 19th edition of the Report Card on American Education is a comprehensive overview of educational achievement levels, focusing on performance and gains for low-income students, in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. The Report Card details state-by-state grades in the following policy areas:

1. State Academic Standards

English and Language Arts

Mathematics
2. Private School Choice Programs

“A” Grade or Multiple programs
3. Charter Schools

Charter Schools Allowed
Charter School Law Grade
4. Teacher Quality

Delivering Well Prepared Teachers
Expanding the Teaching Pool
Identifying Effective Teachers
Retaining Effective Teachers
Exiting Ineffective Teachers
5. Online Learning

Multi-District, Full-time Online SchooDigital Learning Now! Metrics Achieved
6. Home School Regulation Burdens

‘We have to do better’ – Trenton school officials seek reversal of low test scores

Jenna Pizzi:

For students from third to eighth grades, achievement has remained stagnant over the last five years. Last school year, the district had 26.9 percent of third graders ranked as proficient or above in language arts. That proficiency stayed in the low 20 percent range for grades four through seven. In eighth grade, 42.2 percent were ranked as proficient or higher in language arts and literacy.

Math scores hovered between 44 and 32 percent proficient in the 2013-2014 school year for grades three through six. For grades seven and eight, scores sank to 20 and 25 percent, respectively.

In the HSPA test given to 11th graders, there was a 71 percent proficiency in language arts and a 39 percent proficiency in math. There has been an improvement in language arts in the last four years, said Edward Ward, supervisor of instructional technology and accountability.

Johnson said her team is crafting a response by gathering information from teachers in high achieving schools in the district about their best practices and proven methods while also examining what works throughout the state and country.

Via Laura Waters.

Madison has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

Walter Benjamin’s Radio Plays for Kids (1929-1932)

open culture:

Benjamin’s youth and adult programming has been collected by Verso press in a new book entitled Radio Benjamin, which “brings together some of his most accessible” thinking. “Fascinated by the impact of new technology on culture,” writes Verso, Benjamin “wrote and presented something in the region of eighty broadcasts using the new medium of radio.” Between 1929 and 1932, he delivered around 30 broadcasts he called “Enlightenment for Children” (Aufklärung für Kinder), many of which you can hear read in the original German by Harald Wiesner at Ubuweb (German speakers, listen to an episode above). These, Ubuweb informs us, focused on “introducing the youth to various, some of them classical, natural catastrophes, for instance the Lisbon earthquake of the 1750’s that so shook the optimism of Voltaire and the century.”

Another of Benjamin’s subjects was “various episodes of lawlessness, fraud and deceit, much of it recent.” During one such broadcast, “The Bootleggers,” Benjamin wonders aloud rhetorically, “should children even hear these kinds of stories? Stories of swindlers and miscreants who break the law trying to make a pile of dough, and often succeed?” He admits, “It’s a legitimate question.” He then goes on to elucidate “the laws and grand intentions that create the backdrop for the stories in which alcohol smugglers are heroes” and tells, in fascinating detail, a few “little tales” of said heroes.

Greek Letters at a Price

Risa Doherty:

Imagine finding a bill for $200 in your mailbox because your daughter was late to a couple of sorority events. Imagine, too, that those who snitched were her new best friends. This is one of the unwelcome surprises of sorority membership.

Depending on the generosity of the vice president of standards, a fine can be reversed with proof of a qualifying reason, such as a funeral, doctor’s appointment or medical emergency, so long as a doctor’s note is forthcoming. A paper due or a test the next day? No excuse. (Fraternities, by the way, rarely impose even nominal fines to enforce punctuality.)

Now imagine attending mandatory weekend retreats, throwing yourself into charitable work, making gifts for your sisters and, at tradition-thick schools like the University of Alabama and University of Missouri, investing 30 to 40 hours pomping — threading tissue paper through chicken wire to create elaborate homecoming decorations or parade floats that outdo rivals’.

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During fall or winter rush, sororities court starry-eyed freshmen. They showcase their joyful conviviality with skits and serenades. They stress the benefits of joining, and brag about attracting the prettiest, smartest or most athletic. At many traditional sororities, however, not much energy is spent explaining what is expected, leaving many pledges unaware of the considerable time commitment and costs.

Photo

Some sororities will fine members for being late to events. It can be reversed, with a doctor’s note.

The Crusades in Arab School Textbooks

J. Determine:

This article examines the depiction of the Crusades in Arab school textbooks. In theintroductory ﬁrst part, perceptions of the Crusades manifest in Arab historiography aredescribed. In addition, modern political discourses referring to the Crusades among Arabauthors, politicians and representatives of political Islam are explained. In the second part,accounts of the Crusades in school textbooks from Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon,Palestine, Egypt, Libya and Tunisia are analysed, focusing on the sources used by the books’authors, the terminologies, conceptions, reasoning, and narratives found in them, and the resultsof the Crusades as they are portrayed. The third part concludes by explaining three different approaches to how the textbooks relate the history, and shows the historical sensibilitiesconcerning the Crusades as taught by the schoolbooks

Despite angst over standardized testing, Wisconsin may be on right path

Alan Borsuk:

This may be the most politically incorrect thing I’ve ever said in this space: There are positive things to say about what’s going on in standardized testing in Wisconsin.

Everybody hates testing. Kids, teachers, politicians of all stripes. Even the biggest testing advocates in the country say there is too much testing. Testing is useless. It interferes with real education. There is a lot of reason to take the criticism seriously.

But I say: Maybe there’s hope, and maybe Wisconsin is on a new and good path.

First, an anecdote: About 15 years ago, I attended the annual gathering of testing chiefs from states across the country. I remember a panel discussion in which four experts described what was wrong with the way testing was being done.

The fifth person on the panel was the education adviser to the then-governor of Indiana. His message: That’s nice, but my boss and legislature want test scores.

Guess whose viewpoint prevailed. And things got only bigger, more pervasive and more controversial. In 2002, the No Child Left Behind federal education law went on the books, with its requirement that pretty much every public schoolchild in America be tested in reading and math every year from third through eighth grade and at one grade in high school.

Wisconsin’s WKCE has long been criticized for its lack of rigor and poor timing. Yet, it continued for years…

“Schools should not rely on only WKCE data to gauge progress of individual students or to determine effectiveness of programs or curriculum”.

Commentary on Monolithic K-12 a Governance

Larry Cuban:

I do not suggest that educational philanthropists have caused centralized policymaking or loss of faith in professional educators’ judgment since both had begun in the mid-1960s with the Elementary and Secondary Education Act underwriting federal and state actions and continued through the 1980s–A Nation at Risk called for states to act on their recommendations–and into the 1990s with the spread of mayoral control in big cities. And of course, No Child Left Behind (2002) has the U.S. Secretary of Education intervening into local schools as never before.

I do suggest, however, that “muscular philanthropy” has accelerated consolidation of authority at local, state, and federal levels with the consequence of even further shrinking citizen and school professional participation in governing schools.

Donors have also helped governors and state legislatures compete for federal funds offered through Race To The Top by bankrolling organizations helping officials negotiate federal eligibility rules to apply for funding. State legislation allowing more charter schools, evaluating teachers on the basis of student test scores, and adopting Common Core State Standards and tests strengthened state applications for federal funds. Few local school boards were involved or practitioner voices heard as these state laws imposed top-down requirements on every district and school.

Centralized governing of schools over the past decades has been done not only in the name of increased efficiency in operations and developing excellence in schooling but also in seeking egalitarian outcomes: leave no child behind, college for all, and equipping minority and poor students with essential skills to enter a 21st century workforce. This deep concern for those who have been educationally disadvantaged over decades is part of the belief system of foundation and corporate executives who push for centralized governance, curriculum and testing mandates, and accountability rules.

Via Noel Radomski.

The students from Hong Kong who daren’t voice open support for Occupy

The South China Morning Post:

For Leo, one of about 5,000 Hongkongers studying at Jinan University in Guangzhou, the democracy movement feels achingly distant but its effects ripple through his daily campus life, widening the gulf with mainland students.

Leo often travels home on weekends to visit his family and has seen the street skirmishes up close.

He strongly supports the protest but, back on campus on weekdays, he’s careful about how he shows his interest. He shares photos about the movement with mainland friends but they express little interest, he says.

Organising a social activity, even one as benign as a Christmas get-together, is frowned upon by the campus administration, so a gathering with a political bent is out of the question.

“Many of us [Hongkongers] support and understand the students who remain in Admiralty, Causeway Bay and Mong Kok,” said Leo, whose full name cannot be used due to fears of possible reprisals by the school. “So far, we haven’t felt a taboo on talking about it on campus. But the conversations are usually only among the Hong Kong students.”

Jinan has the most international student body of any mainland university. Nearly a third of its 35,320 students come from Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan or overseas countries.

Philadelphia schools crippled by budget “crisis” ($2,814,500,000 budget or $21,425/student!)

PBS Newshour:

JOHN TULENKO: Last month, about 1,000 ninth graders marched to the football field at Northeast High School for a very different kind of kickoff ceremony.

WOMAN: We are doing a mock graduation. It’s an opportunity for our incoming ninth grade class to make a commitment. We want to put the urge in them that they promise they are going to be right back here in June 2018.

JOHN TULENKO: But hanging over this ceremony and the odds students will graduate is a school budget crisis that’s been called the worst in the country. Northeast has 3,000 students and two principals, Sharon McColskey and Linda Carroll.

SHARON MCCOLSKEY, Northeast High: In past years, operating budgets were probably 10 times what ours is right now, if not more.

Just the thought of opening the schools with what we have in the bank, real or in our budget, was really scary.

Philadelphia’s 2014-2015 $2,814,500,000 budget for 131,362 (2013–14) students. That’s $21,425 per student!

UCLA faculty approves diversity class requirement

Larry Gordon:

The faculty of UCLA’s largest academic unit voted by a narrow margin to require future undergraduates to take a course on ethnic, cultural, religious or gender diversity. The move came after three previous efforts had failed.

Officials announced Friday that the faculty of the UCLA College of Letters and Science voted 332 to 303, with 24 blank ballots, to start the requirement for incoming freshmen in fall 2015 and new transfer students in 2017.

Paul Vallas Criticizes Rauner’s Position On Charter Schools, Education Issues

“Progress Illinois”:

Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn’s running mate Paul Vallas, a former school executive, says he and GOP gubernatorial candidate Bruce Rauner have fundamentally different views on education reform.

Vallas is the former head of the Chicago Public Schools as well as the school districts in New Orleans and Philadelphia. He was most recently the schools chief in Bridgeport, Connecticut.

In the past as a school district leader, Vallas has promoted some controversial education reforms like charter school expansion, which Quinn opposes.

Both Rauner — a millionaire venture capitalist who has been a leader in the corporate education reform movement — and his running mate Wheaton councilwoman Evelyn Sanguinetti support charter school growth.

Much more on Paul Vallas, here.

2 firms that won LAUSD’s tech program most active in seeking meetings

Howard Blume:

More than a year before the Los Angeles Board of Education agreed to an iPads-for-all program, Apple and a leading curriculum company repeatedly sought meetings with school board members, newly released emails and records reviewed by The Times show.

The communications with the board and representatives from Apple and Pearson far exceeded those with other vendors vying for a share of the $1.3-billion initiative to provide a computer, loaded with curriculum, to every student, teacher and campus administrator.

The emails and documents do not indicate that board members violated laws or L.A. Unified’s ethics policy. But they show how the two companies tried to win lucrative contracts with the nation’s second-largest school system. Both companies offered to give school board members informational sessions about their products and to explain how they were currently being used within the district and elsewhere.

Is Sudden Decline Of For-Profit Colleges Good For Education?

James Marshall Crotty:

Though most for-profit college programs will remain open under the new Obama administration gainful employment regulations, the brand value of the for-profit college industry has been significantly hurt by intense scrutiny at all levels of government. Investigations by 37 state attorneys general, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the SEC and the Department of Justice (DOJ) have heaped a world of financial pain – enrollment at for-profit colleges is down 9.7% this year – and negative publicity on the sector. While some for-profits will fight the administration’s new regulations in court — or hope that a newly Republican Congress will block spending for the mandates – many for-profits have already decided to opt out of the market altogether.

Last week, the Pittsburgh-based Education Management Corporation (EDMC) decided to go private, in part to avoid quarterly scrutiny by investors of its sizable legal issues. Moreover, Grand Canyon University (GCU) – whose spirituality-inflected curriculum, sports teams (Go Antelopes), and profitability set it apart from other for-profits – is considering going nonprofit in part to avoid the “stigma” that is attached to the “for-profit college” label. Then there’s the case of Corinthian Colleges, which was forced to “teach out” or sell most of its North American locations.

K – 12 tax and spending climate: Child poverty in U.S. is at highest point in 20 years, report finds

Gale Holland:

Child poverty in America is at its highest point in 20 years, putting millions of children at increased risk of injuries, infant mortality, and premature death, according to a policy analysis published Monday in the journal JAMA Pediatrics.

As the U.S. emerges from the worst recession since the Great Depression, 25% of children don’t have enough food to eat and 7 million kids still don’t have health insurance, the analysis says. Even worse: Five children die daily by firearms, and one dies every seven hours from abuse or neglect.

Missouri education department facilitators are paid $500 per meeting “plus necessary expenses”

Alex Stuckey:

Every couple of weeks since late September, educators, parents and business leaders have traveled to Jefferson City to participate in work groups tasked with developing standards to replace Common Core.

The meetings were scheduled by the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education in two-day clusters during the work week, forcing participants to miss work to attend. Participants aren’t paid. They’re not even reimbursed for their travel, food or lodging.

But the controversial department-appointed facilitators and note takers are: $500 per meeting plus “necessary expenses,” department spokeswoman Nancy Bowles said.

“That’s surprising, especially since they say they don’t have money to pay the (group) members’ … travel expenses,” Rep. Kurt Bahr, R-O’Fallon, said. “That does seem like a pretty good wage. The meetings are an all day affair but no more than a standard work day.”

Voter Turn-out Needed for MTI Recertification Elections

Madison Teachers, Inc. Solidarity Newsletter, via a kind Jeannie Kamholtz email (PDF):

Getting Organized! MTI now has over two hundred (200) Member Organizers including teachers, educational assistants, clerical-technical employees, substitute teachers, security assistants, and retired MTI members who are committed to helping the next generation maintain their Union. Member Organizers are volunteers who have agreed to serve as point people in their building/work location to help build awareness and support for MTI’s recertification elections.

Get-out-the-vote! In political elections, voter turnout is critical. In Union recertification elections, it is even more critical. The experiences of other Wisconsin public sector Unions show that when employees vote, they overwhelmingly vote Union YES! Where recertification elections have lost, it is because less than 51% of the eligible voters cast a ballot. Unlike political elections, in recertification elections a non-vote counts as a “no vote”.

In MTI’s recertification election, ballots can be cast 24 hours per day, seven days per week, via phone or computer, beginning at Noon on November 5 and continuing through Noon on November 25. The process is quick and efficient and should take no more than a couple minutes. That said, others have reported difficulties where votes were not counted, when they failed to accurately complete each step in the balloting process. It is for that reason that MTI is providing all MTI-represented employees with detailed voting instructions on posters, flyers and palm cards.

The MTI Recertification Election palm cards provide MTI-represented staff the phone number, web address and voting instructions. On the reverse side of the palm card, voters are asked to complete their name, work location & bargaining unit and give the completed card totheirMTIFacultyRepresentativeorMemberOrganizer.

After doing so,one will receivean“IVoted”button. Someworklocations will hold raffles using the completed palm cards. By collecting completed palm cards, your Union organizing team will be able to try to assure that the 51% threshold is met, as mandated by Walker’s Act 10, during the 20-day election period. Additional information on MTI’s recertification elections is available at www.madisonteachers.org.

Power, Money, Schools, Influence & Elections: The $30,000,000 California Superintendent Race

Caroline Porter:

The campaign for California’s top education post, typically a low-wattage contest, has become this state’s hottest race because of a division among Democrats over tenure rules and other policies that diminish teachers’ union power.

One sign of the high attention: Nearly $30 million has been spent on campaigns for the postof state superintendent of public education,compared with $13 million on the contested race at the top of the ticket, for governor.

The amount of direct campaign contributions, donations to independent groups and advertisements is more than triple the amount spent in the last superintendent’s race, in 2010, according to Autumn Carter, executive director of California Common Sense, a nonpartisan think tank.

The two candidates for superintendent,incumbent Tom Torlakson and challenger Marshall Tuck, both Democrats,are squaring off on hot-button issues in education, such as tenure laws, teacher evaluations and the role of testing in schools. Recent polls suggest voters are evenly split between the two men.

“The fact that the superintendent race is an almost $30 million race,that’s a little mind-boggling,” said Ms. Carter.

Dive in:

Tom Torlakson: duckduckgo | Candidate Website.

Marshall Tuck: duckduckgo | Candidate Website.

K-12 Tax & Spending Climate: A few charts

Jason Karaian & Matt Phillips:

4. America’s escalating student debt…

The stock of outstanding student debt in the US has surged to more than $1.1 trillion. This isn’t all bad news—more people are in college, which is a good thing. But some economists suggest that the burden of student debt is reshaping the spending patterns of younger Americans, prompting them to put off buying houses, cars, and much else besides.

5. …And its outlandish university tuition costs

Everyone knows that higher education is a costly undertaking in the US. But until they see this chart, it’s hard to understand exactly how expensive it is. Since 1978 college tuition costs have surged more than 1,200%, compared with an increase of 280% for overall prices, as measured by the consumer price index. For the record, US colleges counter that this measure only captures the “sticker cost,” and actually overstates the amount most students really pay because of grants and other financial breaks.

New report by the Sutton Trust: What Makes Great Teaching

Daisy Christodoulou:

Today the Sutton Trust and the University of Durham have published a fascinating new report called What Makes Great Teaching? It sets out to answer that title question, as well as looking at ways we can measure great teaching, and how that could be used to promote better learning. Here is my short summary of some key points from the report.

1. What is effective teaching? This report is very honest about the fact that we don’t have as clear an idea of what good teaching is as we think we do. I think this is an important point to make. Too often, reports like this one start from the point of assuming that everyone knows what good teaching is, and that the challenge is finding the time/money/will/methodology to implement changes. This report is saying that actually, there are a lot of misconceptions about what good teaching is, and as such, reform efforts could end up doing more harm than good. We need to think more clearly and critically about what good teaching is – and this report does that. As well as listing what effective teaching practices are, it also lists what ineffective practices are. This list has already received some media attention (including a Guardian article with a bit from me), as it says that some popular practices such as learning styles and discovery learning are not backed up by evidence. The report draws its evidence from a wide range of sources, including knowledge from cognitive psychology. It cites Dan Willingham quite a lot, and quotes his wonderful line that memory is the residue of thought. As regular readers will know, I think cognitive psychology has a lot to offer education, so it is great to see it getting so much publicity in this report.

It’s All About Nuance. How to Convey and Discern Email Tone.

Karen Lachtanski:

Everyone has been there. You’re emailing back and forth with someone at work and then all of a sudden, a sentence gives you pause. You think, Wait a second. Is she mad at me?

You reread it. Five minutes go by and you still can’t tell if you somehow offended this person or are completely missing a joke. Eventually, you just craft a vague response and hope for the best.

Tone can be hard to discern and convey over email and any other digital communication. In fact, a 2005 study, amusingly titled “Egocentrism over e-mail,” found that people vastly overestimate how often the recipient of a message will correctly identify their intended tone, whether serious or sarcastic. Senders estimated nearly 80 percent accuracy. In reality, recipients sensed the right tone only 56 percent of the time.

Pushing back on reckless critique of charter schools

Crystal Williams:

Who is Julia Sass Rubin and what does she have against my kids?

Yesterday, the Rutgers University associate professor was quoted in The Star Ledger saying that “people in abject poverty don’t have the bandwidth to even evaluate charter schools. . . .It’s just not going to be high on their list.”

And about a month ago, in her quest to restrict the choice that parents like me have, she falsely suggested that the school my child attends in Newark loses more black boys to attrition than the district schools and that our school doesn’t serve “difficult” black boys.

Nothing could be further from my reality.

The Simpson Street Free Press will celebrate 23 years of academic success – Sunday, November 2, 12-3pm. Visit Dane County’s first after-school (and summer) youth center dedicated solely to core subject academics. Meet our student writers and see academic achievement in action. Get a newsroom tour from local kids who tackle achievement gaps everyday – with writing and hard work. Preview data that shows real results. SSFP students will thank all of you, the many Friends and supporters who make this youth center, and our students, successful. Location: South Towne Mall, 2311 West Broadway.

The Simpson Street Free Press (SSFP) delivers core subject academic instruction in after-school settings. Students (ages 8-18) write and produce five separate youth newspapers, including a new bilingual publication: La Prensa Libre de Simpson Street. SSFP graduates (now in college) supervise younger students. SSFP also operates a network of youth book clubs. The goal of the SSFP is to foster literacy, spark student success, and bridge achievement gaps.

The SSFP formula accomplishes multiple outcomes. Central to SSFP pedagogy is across the curriculum instructional practices. Lesson plans are designed to support in-school learning. Students encounter predictable connections to the school day. Young writers conduct research, use technology, write and read extensively. They learn practical and transferable academic strategies. They acquire real-world workplace skills. School grades and attendance are measured. SSFP students participate in civic discourse and influence their peers. As their name suggests, free speech and journalism are great ways to spark learning.

How Standing Desks Can Help Students Focus in the Classroom

Holly Korbey

The rise of the standing desk may appear to be a response to the modern, eat-at-your-desk, hunched-over worker chained to her computer, but history paints a different picture: Hemingway, Benjamin Franklin, and Thomas Jefferson all stood while they worked. Donald Rumsfeld had a standing desk, and so did Charles Dickens. Workplaces are moving toward more standing desks, but schools have been slower to catch on for a variety of reasons, including cost, convenience, and perhaps the assumption that “sit down and pay attention” is the best way to learn.

Mark Benden, Associate Professor of Environmental and Occupational Health at Texas A&M Health Science Center, is looking to change all that. Too much sitting is bad for our health, he said, and students are now facing a host of challenges that may stem in part from too much time in a chair, including obesity and attention disorders. So five years ago, Benden and his team began studying what happened to students when they got out of their traditional seats and moved to standing desks.

Innovation in Education: An Empty Promise

Mike Crowley:

Innovation is among the most abused buzzwords in education today. While few doubt the need for schools to innovate, often, it seems, some school leaders – innovation chasers – those who are keen to attach the label of “innovator” to themselves, have failed to understand what innovation really means.

Horace Dediu has coined the term “innoveracy” to describe those who suffer from innovation illiteracy, the inability to understand the concept and role of innovation. This, he contends, is rooted in a “misuse of the term and the inability to discern the difference between novelty, creation, invention and innovation”. I tend to agree with Dediu’s perspective: too often what is falsely celebrated as innovation is, in reality, mere novelty.

Disastrous reading results remain job number one.

Uncontrolled expansion: how private colleges grew

Andrew McGettigan:

Greg Clark, the new universities minister, has a revised job specification for his higher education responsibilities. Along with preventing violent extremism and promoting education exports, his ministerial brief states that he will oversee “widening participation for students and providers”. It seems that the term “widening participation” has been redefined to mean encouraging more private colleges into the sector.

In this way, Clark takes on the legacy left by his predecessor, David Willetts, who told assembled university heads at the Universities UK spring conference in 2011 that “the biggest lesson I have learned is that the most powerful driver of public sector reform is to let new providers into the system. They do things differently in ways none can predict.”

Millions of pounds of public funding is already being spent to support study at private providers, but beyond well-known private institutions such as BPP University and the University of Buckingham, a host of less familiar private colleges are benefiting from recent policy changes.

This University Teaches You No Skills—Just a New Way to Think

Issie Lapowsky:

Ben Nelson says the primary purpose of a university isn’t to prepare students for a career. It’s to prepare them for life. And he now has $70 million to prove his point.

Nelson is the founder and CEO of a new experiment in higher education called Minerva Project. He says when it comes to learning, job training is the easy part. With the emergence of online courses, it’s easier and cheaper than ever to acquire the hard skills you need to land a job. “Why would you spend a quarter of a million dollars and four years to learn to code in Python?” he says. “If that’s the role of universities, you’d have to be insane to go to universities.”

But that doesn’t mean Nelson believes the country’s liberal arts colleges are doing a particularly terrific job either. He argues most schools do little more than teach students a core canon of information, a practice he says is archaic, given how much information people have access to these days. “Today, it’s absurd to say you need to know this information and without this information, you’re not an informed person,” he says.

Berkeley, a city consumed by a soda tax

Berkeleyside:

On Nov. 4, Berkeley voters will show where they stand on Measure D, the so-called Soda Tax. The proposed tax on sugary beverages has been one of the most hotly debated Berkeley issues in the city’s history, and certainly one that has brought in record levels of campaign expenditure. The No on Measure D lobby has spent $2.3 million in an attempt to defeat the tax, according to campaign finance reports. Former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg has contributed $432,071 in support of the soda tax. (That includes $265,235 for network advertising for commercials during the World Series, $96,836 for cable ads, and a cash donation of $170,000 to the Yes on Measure D effort.) UC Berkeley’s Robert Reich has been vocal in his views — writing a blog post about the issue titled “In its battle with Big Soda, Berkeley may once again make history,” and shooting a video on the same subject.

Gael McKeon has spent several weeks documenting both sides of the campaign with his camera to create this photo essay of a pivotal moment in Berkeley’s political history, one that may set the stage for change nationwide. We publish it exclusively on Berkeleyside. (The ‘No on D’ campaign declined to participate in this story.)

Academics must question more: Romila

Pheroze L. Vincent:

Historian Romila Thapar asked a full house of Delhi’s intelligentsia on Sunday why changes in syllabi and objections to books were not being challenged.

Prof. Thapar was delivering the third Nikhil Chakravartty Memorial Lecture here on Sunday, titled ‘To Question or not to Question: That is the Question.”

“There are more academics in existence than ever before but most prefer not to confront authority even if it debars the path of free thinking. Is this because they wish to pursue knowledge undisturbed or because they are ready to discard knowledge, should authority require them to do so,” the eminent historian asked.

7 countries where Americans can study at universities, in English, for free (or almost free)

Rick Noack:

Since 1985, U.S. college costs have surged by about 500 percent, and tuition fees keep rising. In Germany, they’ve done the opposite.

The country’s universities have been tuition-free since the beginning of October, when Lower Saxony became the last state to scrap the fees. Tuition rates were always low in Germany, but now the German government fully funds the education of its citizens — and even of foreigners.

Explaining the change, Dorothee Stapelfeldt, a senator in the northern city of Hamburg, said tuition fees “discourage young people who do not have a traditional academic family background from taking up study. It is a core task of politics to ensure that young women and men can study with a high quality standard free of charge in Germany.”

What might interest potential university students in the United States is that Germany offers some programs in English — and it’s not the only country. Let’s take a look at the surprising — and very cheap — alternatives to pricey American college degrees.

An American School Immerses Itself in All Things Chinese (nothing like this in Madison)

Jane Peterson:

On weekday mornings, a stream of orange buses and private cars from 75 Minnesota postal codes wrap around Yinghua Academy, the first publicly funded Chinese-immersion charter school in the United States, in the middle-class neighborhood of Northeast Minneapolis. Most pupils, from kindergarten to eighth grade, dash to bright-colored classrooms for the 8:45 a.m. bell, eager to begin “morning meeting,” a freewheeling conversation in colloquial Mandarin.

Meanwhile, two grades form five perfect lines in the gym for calisthenics, Chinese style. Dressed neatly in the school’s blue uniforms, the students enthusiastically count each move — “liu, qi, ba, jiu, shi.”

By 9:15, a calm sense of order pervades the school as formal instruction begins for math, reading, social studies, history and science. Instructors teach in Mandarin, often asking questions that prompt a flurry of raised hands. No one seems to speak out of turn. “We bring together both East and West traditions,” explains the academic director, Luyi Lien, who tries to balance Eastern discipline with Western fun.

Madison has largely killed off any attempt at innovative charter schools. Ironically, the Minneapolis teachers union is authorized to approve for charter schools.

Rethinking the Lecture: In the Information Age, It’s Time to Flip the Classroom

Ryan Craig:

It’s been my experience that too much of the same thing tends to end badly — and higher education is no exception. It was that way in college when my roommate Chris decided his life’s work was to take the Doodle Challenge — at the time, beating the record of 19 burgers within a 2.5 hour session at The Yankee Doodle, the local greasy spoon.

For Chris, downing 20 burgers meant two things: immortality by way of his name on a plaque above the door and not having to pay for the 20 burgers. Chris started out strong. It wasn’t until the tenth burger that he showed any signs of slowing. But, at burger number 12, Chris began to cough and spit, and we knew his chance at glory was over.We paid the bill and enveloped Chris like a fallen prizefighter, hustling him out of the Doodle. That was the last Chris saw of the Doodle for some time, but not the last he saw of those burgers.

Kano Rides Global Coding Wave

Lorraine Luk:

Riding on growing interest in coding, London-based startup Kano Computing Ltd. has shipped thousands of toolkits that allow users to build a computer and write software easily.

Last year, Kano raised about $1.5 million through crowd-funding site Kickstarter to manufacture the kit. The company has also raised over $2 million from investors including Index Ventures, Apple’s former Senior Director James Higa and Lady Gaga’s former manager Troy Carter to strengthen its team and further develop the product, said Kano co-founder and chief executive Yonatan Raz-Fridman.

The company has shipped 18,000 kits to customers on its pre-order list, including Kickstarter CEO Yancey Strickler and Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, said Raz-Fridman. Since the beginning of this month, the Kano kit has been available for $149.99 online, including free shipping to 86 countries.

Princeton Gets 10 Times as Much Tax Money per Student as Public Colleges

Joe Pinsker:

In 2002, Meg Whitman (Princeton class of ‘77), then president of eBay, pledged $30 million to her alma mater to be put toward building a dorm in her own name. The ultimate cost of the 500-student dorm, which required “skilled masons to cut thousands of pieces of stone” and featured three-inch-thick oak doors, worked out to about $200,000 per bed. Despite parting with $30 million at the time, one economist estimated that the real cost of the donation to her was much less: $20 million, thanks to the tax exemptions that come with donating to a university. In essence, the U.S. Treasury covered the $10 million gap.

The government—and thus, taxpayers—give a surprising amount of money to elite private colleges, a lot of which is hard to see because it comes in the form of tax deductions like Whitman’s. Equally hard to see, and perhaps even more lucrative, is that the federal government doesn’t tax the income that universities earn on their billion-dollar endowments. Some of these deductions exist to promote research; others exist because colleges, as institutions, make commitments to serve the public good.

The Inheritance of Education

Richard V. Reeves and Joanna Venator:

Income is the currency of most mobility research – but money is not all that matters in life. There is a long list of other goods in life, including education, wellbeing, trust, agency, interesting work, and so on. Like most mobility researchers, we focus on income because it does matter in itself; because it can be converted to many of the other goods; and because it provides a robust basis for measurement and comparison.

Schooling and Social Mobility

But the transmission of education advantage is also of great interest. Even if someone does not convert a higher level of education into higher income, they are still better off. They can choose more interesting jobs, even if they are not highly-paid. They have more knowledge of the world and possibly of themselves. Education is a good in its own right, not just as a ticket to a fatter paycheck.

K-12 Tax & Spending Climate: Having Babies New Sex-Ed Goal as Danish Fertility Rates Drop

Frances Schwartzkopff:

Sex education in Denmark is about to shift focus after fertility rates dropped to the lowest in almost three decades.

After years of teaching kids how to use contraceptives, Sex and Society, the Nordic country’s biggest provider of sex education materials for schools, has changed its curriculum to encourage having babies under the rubric: “This is how you have children!”

Infertility is considered “an epidemic” in Denmark, said Bjarne Christensen, secretary general of the Copenhagen-based organization. “We see more and more couples needing to get assisted fertility treatment. We see a lot of people who don’t succeed in having children.”

Today’s key fact: you are probably wrong about almost everything

Alberto Nardelli and George Arnett:

Britons overstate the proportion of Muslims in their country by a factor of four, according to a new survey by Ipsos Mori that reveals public understanding of the numbers behind the daily news in 14 countries.

People from the UK also think immigrants make up twice the proportion of the population as is really the case – and that many more people are unemployed than actually are.

Such misconceptions are typical around the world, but they can have a significant impact as politicians aim to focus on voter perceptions, not on the actual data.

Bobby Duffy, managing director of the Ipsos Mori social research institute, said:

On Teacher Quality (Status Quo in Madison)

Frank Bruni:

More than halfway through Joel Klein’s forthcoming book on his time as the chancellor of New York City’s public schools, he zeros in on what he calls “the biggest factor in the education equation.”

It’s not classroom size, school choice or the Common Core.

It’s “teacher quality,” he writes, adding that “a great teacher can rescue a child from a life of struggle.”

We keep coming back to this. As we wrestle with the urgent, dire need to improve education — for the sake of social mobility, for the sake of our economic standing in the world — the performance of teachers inevitably draws increased scrutiny. But it remains one of the trickiest subjects to broach, a minefield of hurt feelings and vested interests.

Klein knows the minefield better than most. As chancellor from the summer of 2002 through the end of 2010, he oversaw the largest public school system in the country, and did so for longer than any other New York schools chief in half a century.

That gives him a vantage point on public education that would be foolish to ignore, and in “Lessons of Hope: How to Fix Our Schools,” which will be published next week, he reflects on what he learned and what he believes, including that poor parents, like rich ones, deserve options for their kids; that smaller schools work better than larger ones in poor communities; and that an impulse to make kids feel good sometimes gets in the way of giving them the knowledge and tools necessary for success.

Related: Madison’s recent 2014-2015 budget simply perpetuates the monolithic K-12 governance model, despite its long term, disastrous reading results.

Most Autistic People Have Normal Brain Anatomy

Nueroskeptik:

Published in Cerebral Cortex by Israeli researchers Shlomi Haar and colleagues, the new research reports that there are virtually no differences in brain anatomy between people with autism and those without.

What makes Haar et al.’s essentially negative claims so powerful is that their study had a huge sample size: they included structural MRI scans from 539 people diagnosed with high-functioning autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and 573 controls. This makes the paper an order of magnitude bigger than a typical structural MRI anatomy study in this field. The age range was 6 to 35.

The scans came from the public Autism Brain Imaging Data Exchange (ABIDE) database, a data sharing initiative which pools scans from 18 different neuroimaging centers. Haar et al. examined the neuroanatomy of the cases and controls using the popular FreeSurfer software package.

Parents feel ‘unequipped’ to help children with maths

Josie Gurney-Read:

“It’s not a subject, maths, it’s a language. A language, without which, we cannot communicate. The teaching of arithmetic and algebra, for example, is like teaching the grammar of this language.”

It will perhaps be unsurprising to most that Carol Vorderman, who spent 26 years as co-host on the Channel 4 quiz show Countdown, should be working towards giving schoolchildren the resources and opportunity to achieve highly in maths at primary school.

Having created The Maths Factor – an online maths school for primary age children – four years ago, Vorderman will attend the first ‘graduation day’ today, for children who have made exceptional progress through the program.

Related: Math Forum.

study found student outcomes improved markedly in classes where faculty did practically anything other than lecture.

Rachel Pincus:

Being a nonprofit, however, Code.org looking for some financial help with this initiative, which also includes preparing teachers to introduce coding skills for the first time. The approximate cost of bringing coding classes to such a large audience will be $5 million, $1 million of which is spent just running the campaign itself. To this end, they’ve used a popular crowdfunding platform to an unusual end: instead of serving up some new gadget or material perk, their Indiegogo page for the initiative instead promises some more cerebral perks, including a Q&A; for you or your school with Code.org founder and CEO Hadi Partovi or even an opportunity to “act like Oprah for a day.” Larger donors can get tax deductions for their contributions, in a similar way to more conventional donation channels.

UNC-Chapel Hill Should Lose Accreditation

Brian Rosenberg:

I have read many responses to the report of corruption at Chapel Hill. Some argue that those at the center of the activities were simply trying to help at-risk students, to which my response is that awarding credits and grades without providing instruction is not “help” in any sense that I can accept. In the case of student athletes, I see it as closer to exploitation for the benefit of the university. Some argue that this behavior is widespread among institutions with highly visible Division I sports programs and therefore should provoke no particular surprise or outrage.

I hope that this last claim is untrue. If it is, however, the only way to alter such behavior is to respond with force and clarity when it is uncovered. Reducing the number of athletic scholarships at Chapel Hill, or vacating wins, or banning teams from postseason competition, is in each case a punishment wholly unsuitable to the crime. The crime involves fundamental academic integrity. The response, regardless of the visibility or reputation or wealth of the institution, should be to suspend accredited status until there is evidence that an appropriate level of integrity is both culturally and structurally in place.

Anything less would be dismissive of the many institutions whose transcripts actually have meaning.

Rethinking vocational high school as a path to college

Emily Hanford:

For years, vocational high schools have been seen as a lesser form of schooling – tracking some kids off to work while others were encouraged to go on to college and pursue higher income professions. But things are changing. Vocational high schools are focusing much more on preparing students for higher education.

At one of those schools – Minuteman Regional High School in Lexington, Massachusetts – students can learn traditional trades like carpentry, plumbing and welding. They can also learn high tech fields such as video game design, engineering, and biotechnology.

Minuteman students spend half their time in vocational classes – often referred to as “career and technical classes – and half their time in academic courses. About 60 percent of the school’s graduates go on to college. That’s not the way things were when principal Ernest Houle learned welding at a vocational high school back in the 1980s.

“The highest-level math I ever had in high school was an Algebra 1,” says Houle. “And that only happened my sophomore year because it fit in the schedule.”

RACE FOR A SCHOOL PLACE: Trojan Horse academy among most sought after schools

Emma McKinney:

A school at the heart of the Trojan Horse scandal has proven to be one of most sought after secondaries in the Midlands, the Birmingham Mail can exclusively reveal.

Park View School the Academy in Alum Rock was flooded with 884 applications – despite only being able to offer 120 places to pupils this academic year.

The over-subscribed school was so popular with parents wanting their child to start Year 7 at the controversial academy this September that it was flooded with more than SEVEN applications for each of its places.

School discipline: is this working?

This American Life:

Stories of schools struggling with what to do with misbehaving kids. There’s no general agreement about what teachers should do to discipline kids. And there’s evidence that some of the most popular punishments actually may harm kids.

K-12 Tax & Spending Climate: Government Salaries Compared to Teachers and Other Professions

In addition to supporting members of Congress and civil servants, U.S. taxpayers support welfare recipients. And they support them lavishly, too. Hawaii, Massachusetts, and D.C. residents receive sizeable welfare payments (read: salaries). Indeed, the magnitude of these payments exceeds the average salary of an American teacher, as well as a soldier deployed in Afghanistan, by at least $10,000 per year.

The public can forget all the clap-trap they are hearing about austerity. Indeed, a fairly dull knife could cut billions of dollars from the U.S. government’s largess.

How Standing Desks Can Help Students Focus in the Classroom

Holly Korbey:

The rise of the standing desk may appear to be a response to the modern, eat-at-your-desk, hunched-over worker chained to her computer, but history paints a different picture: Hemingway, Benjamin Franklin, and Thomas Jefferson all stood while they worked. Donald Rumsfeld had a standing desk, and so did Charles Dickens. Workplaces are moving toward more standing desks, but schools have been slower to catch on for a variety of reasons, including cost, convenience, and perhaps the assumption that “sit down and pay attention” is the best way to learn.

Mark Benden, Associate Professor of Environmental and Occupational Health at Texas A&M Health Science Center, is looking to change all that. Too much sitting is bad for our health, he said, and students are now facing a host of challenges that may stem in part from too much time in a chair, including obesity and attention disorders. So five years ago, Benden and his team began studying what happened to students when they got out of their traditional seats and moved to standing desks.

It’s really difficult to fire a bad teacher. A group of Silicon Valley investors wants to change that

Danny Kim:

On a warm day in early June, a Los Angeles County trial-court judge, Rolf M. Treu, pink-cheeked beneath a trim white beard, dropped a bombshell on the American public-school system. Ruling in Vergara v. California, Treu struck down five decades-old California laws governing teacher tenure and other job protections on the grounds that they violate the state’s constitution.

In his 4,000-word decision, he bounded through an unusually short explanation of what was an unprecedented interpretation of the law. Step 1: Tenure and other job protections make it harder to fire teachers and therefore effectively work to keep bad ones in the classroom. Step 2: Bad teachers “substantially undermine” a child’s education. That, Treu wrote, not only “shocks the conscience” but …

In this innovative kindergarten class, A is for ‘Action!’

Nita Lelyveld:

The palm trees are made of construction paper, the waves of shiny fabric. The actors wear straw hats, sunglasses and loud Hawaiian shirts.

They lean back in lawn chairs, legs too short to touch the ground. One holds a goblet, the other a picture book. In the background, Madonna sings of “La Isla Bonita.”

“Action!” the director calls out. Then, “Drink from your cup, Dyana, drink, drink, drink. Abel, read, turn the page.”

The shooting schedule has been grueling, especially given that the talent can’t stay on task for more than 10 minutes.

I am a 14-year-old Yazidi girl given as a gift to an ISIS commander. Here’s how I escaped.

Mohammed Salih:

As the sun rose over my dusty village on Aug. 3, relatives called with terrifying news: Jihadists from the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) were coming for us. I’d expected just another day full of household tasks in Tel Uzer, a quiet spot on the western Nineveh plains of Iraq, where I lived with my family. Instead, we scrambled out of town on foot, taking only our clothes and some valuables.

After an hour of walking north, we stopped to drink from a well in the heart of the desert. Our plan was to take refuge on Mount Sinjar, along with thousands of other Yazidis like us who were fleeing there, because we had heard a lot of stories about Islamic State brutality and what they had done to non-Muslims. They’d been converting religious minorities or simply killing them. But suddenly several vehicles drew up and we found ourselves surrounded by militants wearing Islamic State uniforms. Several people screamed in horror; we were scared for our lives. I’ve never felt so helpless in my 14 years. They had blocked our path to safety, and there was nothing we could do.

Florida school boards: Standard charter contracts unconstitutional?

Travis Pillow:

Florida school boards are questioning the constitutionality of standard charter school contracts as the state Board of Education gets set to vote on rules creating them.
Their objections appear in hundreds of pages of recent comments and letters to the state Department of Education. The Florida School Boards Association wrote in July: “We view this as an unconstitutional encroachment on the school board’s authority to operate, supervise, and control all public schools within the school district.”

The comments and letters were obtained by redefinED through a public records request. They reflect more than a year of public pushing and behind-the-scenes wrangling over standardized charter school contracts. The rules creating them are set to come before the state board at its November meeting.

The proposed contracts were set in motion by a 2013 law. Backed by charter school advocates, the law required the Department of Education to develop a standard contract that would serve as a starting point for agreements between charter schools and every district in the state. The stated goal: To streamline the contract process, set a baseline for expectations and create an opportunity for more meaningful negotiations.

Perhaps the author might research District operations?

MYTHS AND REALITIES OF EBOLA VIRUS DISEASE in English and other languages

Ronald E. LaPorte, via a kind Richard Askey email:

Dear Friends,

Ebola is frightening. Most information from TV, Facebook, and from our governments is poor. We want to change this by providing to you the best possible scientific information about Ebola from leading scientists from Nigeria, Africa, the Library of Alexandria and experts world wide.

We have created a cutting edge lecture on Ebola for you to teach your students, share with your faculty and distribute to your friends. The Lecture has been translated by 20 scientific experts into Arabic, Chinese, English, Farsi, French, Hebrew, Japanese, Malay, Pashtu, Russian, Spanish and Urdu. It present the best possible scientific knowledge about this disease.

http://www.pitt.edu/~super1/lecture/lec52511/index.htm

Ebola Virus Disease is a severe, highly infectious and often fatal illness that first appeared 40 years ago. The present outbreak is the most devastating compared the previous 33. It is producing enormous fear and rumors due to lack of good quality scientific information. The outbreak and fear have almost ‘crushed’ the affected countries economically, health care and science

The Ebola Outbreak causes havoc due to misinformation. We therefore brought together a team of leading scientists from Nigeria, Africa and internationally to provide the best possible scientific information and share this lecture with you and the world.

We provide this to you as a “gift that is meant to be given”. Please share this with your students and faculty, and post the lecture on Facebook, tell others about it through Twitter, etc. The Library of Alexandria Lecture is free, developed by the global scientific community.

Include links to this from Universities, Libraries, schools media, etc.

Let us continue to learn and share the scientific facts about Ebola.

Drs. Elegba, Kana, Bello-Manga and Adiri
Faculty of Medicine
Kaduna State University, Nigeria
Ismail Serageldin, Ph.D., Director Library of Alexandria
Ronald LaPorte, Ph.D. Director Emeritus WHO Collaborating Centre, Pittsburgh

If you have questions contact Musa Kana musakana77@yahoo.com, or Ron
LaPorte,ronaldlaporte@gmail.com

And The Remarkable team of translators that can be found at the Lecture

October 2014

‘The Bell Curve’ 20 years later: A Q&A with Charles Murray

James Pethokoukis:

October marks the 20th anniversary of “The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life,” the extraordinarily influential and controversial book by AEI scholar Charles Murray and Richard Herrnstein. Here, Murray answers a few questions about the predictions, controversy, and legacy of his book.

It’s been 20 years since “The Bell Curve” was published. Which theses of the book do you think are the most relevant right now to American political and social life?

American political and social life today is pretty much one great big “Q.E.D.” for the two main theses of “The Bell Curve.” Those theses were, first, that changes in the economy over the course of the 20th century had made brains much more valuable in the job market; second, that from the 1950s onward, colleges had become much more efficient in finding cognitive talent wherever it was and shipping that talent off to the best colleges. We then documented all the ways in which cognitive ability is associated with important outcomes in life — everything from employment to crime to family structure to parenting styles. Put those all together, we said, and we’re looking at some serious problems down the road. Let me give you a passage to quote directly from the close of the book:

Predicting the course of society is chancy, but certain tendencies seem strong enough to worry about:

An increasingly isolated cognitive elite.
A merging of the cognitive elite with the affluent.
A deteriorating quality of life for people at the bottom end of the cognitive distribution.

Unchecked, these trends will lead the U.S. toward something resembling a caste society, with the underclass mired ever more firmly at the bottom and the cognitive elite ever more firmly anchored at the top, restructuring the rules of society so that it becomes harder and harder for them to lose. (p. 509)

Madison Schools’ 2014-2015 Budget a No No for Governor Candidate Burke

Chris Rickert:

It’s no surprise Democratic nominee for governor and Madison School Board member Mary Burke isn’t saying how she plans to vote Monday on a proposed school district budget that includes a $100 tax increase for the average homeowner.
For purely political reasons, dropping that particular dime would be a pretty dumb thing to do.

Budgets are way more than just their impact on taxpayers/voters, though. They also reflect a school district’s priorities and approach to educating children and compensating teachers.

Burke hasn’t released an education plan in her campaign for governor, so it might be nice to know how she feels about some of those details before they start counting the votes nine days from now.

Specifically, I asked her about:

$4.1 million in spending on technology upgrades, including a plan to eventually put tablet computers in the hands of most students.

$1.5 million for a new behavior plan that de-emphasizes punishment in favor of teaching positive behavior skills.

$250,000 for a new staff evaluation system.

$150,000 for a “grow your own” system for recruiting employees, including ones that — in a district with an ethnically diverse student body but an almost all-white teaching staff — are “culturally responsive.”

Continuing to provide union staff with automatic raises for seniority and degree attainment.

Burke’s response was brief, emailed, unrevealing and on-message: “They all have merits but need to be considered in light of whether we can fund them while being responsible to the taxpayers.”

A scouring of the video recordings and available minutes of this year’s budget meetings also didn’t shed much light on where she stands.

She rarely offered an opinion during the meetings, but when she did it was usually as a voice of fiscal restraint, questioning the size of the tax levy and highlighting the need to take into account the current year budget’s effect on future years’ budgets.

Of course, it’s pretty safe to assume that Burke will vote against any budget that includes a tax increase. She has reminded reporters that’s what she did back in June when the preliminary budget was before the board. And she was the lone “no” vote on the final 2013-14 budget in November 2013, 27 days after she announced her run for governor.

Props to Rickert for diving into the details…. A no vote is rather easy, but this annual exercise simply perpetuates Madison’s monolithic K-12 governance model, despite its long term, disastrous reading results.

What’s at Risk Without MTI?

Madison Teachers, Inc. PDF Newsletter via a kind Jeannie Kamholtz email (PDF):

Over the past few weeks, discussions have been occurring throughout the District about MTI’s upcoming MTI Recertification Elections. One of the most frequently asked questions by newer staff, those who are not aware of MTI’s many accomplishments over the years is, “what is at risk if we lose the Union?” To answer that question, one only needs to look around the State of Wisconsin to see what has happened in other school districts where employees no longer have a collective voice in the workplace.

In many school districts, employers have increased employee health insurance premium
contributions to 12%. Such an increase would decrease an employee’s pay between $61 and $212 per month, depending on the plan the individual has selected. Your Union is currently working with the District to collaboratively identify potential sources for health insurance savings rather than implementing a premium co-pay. The five Contracts for MTI represented employees do not now mandate any employee contribution toward health insurance.

For teachers who are new parents, MTI’s Contract provides paid time off during maternity leave via a combination of personal sick leave and Sick Leave Bank benefits. Non-probationary teachers also have the Contract right to take unpaid child rearing leaves of absence for a semester, a full school year, or up to two school years should they need or desire to stay home with their child(ren) for a period of time regardless of the child’s age. Those rights could disappear or erode without a Union to advocate for them.

For longtime teachers, educational assistants, clerical-technical staff and security assistants approaching retirement, MTI’s Contracts provide retiring employees with 100% of the value of their accumulated sick leave for the payment of post-retirement insurances. Many school districts have capped or reduced such benefits, forcing longtime employees to work longer in order to afford post- retirement insurance premiums.

Other school districts have added classes to the workday (without additional pay); extended the work year (without additional pay); required mandatory evening obligations (without additional pay); reduced benefits for disabled employees; eliminated planning time; pro-rated insurance benefits based on part-time status; eliminated just cause and due process protections against unfair discipline or dismissal; and destroyed salary schedules.

MTI encourages all represented employees to spend a few moments to page through their Collective Bargaining Agreement to see the entirety of the issues that the Union has negotiated for them over the past decades. Any or all of those negotiated items would be subject to employer discretion or whim without a Union as your collective voice. Standing together, we can continue to advocate for working conditions/learning conditions that educational employees and students need. Voting to recertify is the first step towards maintaining your collective voice at work.

Why Government Spends More Per Pupil at Elite Private Universities Than at Public Universities

Robert Reich:

Imagine a system of college education supported by high and growing government spending on elite private universities that mainly educate children of the wealthy and upper-middle class, and low and declining government spending on public universities that educate large numbers of children from the working class and the poor.

You can stop imagining. That’s the American system right now.

Government subsidies to elite private universities take the form of tax deductions for people who make charitable contributions to them. In economic terms a tax deduction is the same as government spending. It has to be made up by other taxpayers.

These tax subsidies are on the rise because in recent years a relatively few very rich people have had far more money than they can possibly spend or even give away to their children. So they’re donating it to causes they believe in, such as the elite private universities that educated them or that they want their children to attend.

Madison’s Planned Tax & Spending Growth Documents: Redistributed State Tax Dollars up 20.6% Since 2011!

Madison School District PDF:

For MMSD, the most important aspect of multi-year budget planning is the careful use of ‘unused tax levy authority’ which can be carried forward from one year to the next. For 2014-15, the budget has available just over $8.8 million of ‘unused tax levy authority’ which was carried forward from 2013-14.1

The 2014-15 budget calls for use of $5.1 million (or 58%) of this carried-over tax levy authority, with the balance of $3.7 million preserved and carried forward into the 2015-16 budget. Partial use of the carried-over tax levy authority was targeted early in 2014-15 budget development to support the new technology plan. It also supports the compensation increase included in this budget recommendation. We believe this is an appropriate extent of use and caution against any additional use of the $8.8 million in the 2014-15 budget year.
There are two primary reasons for this recommendation, both of which lie ahead in the 2015-16 school year and beyond.

First, greater use of ‘carried-over tax levy authority’ to support additional spending this year will decrease equalization aid next year. Equalization aid, which is the district’s second largest source of revenue (behind only property taxes) is based on a formula which contains disincentives for spending above a prescribed level (the ‘secondary shared cost ceiling’). For example, a sharp increase in shared cost per pupil in 2012-13 contributed to an 11% equalization aid loss in 2013-14.

Looking ahead to 2015-16, depending on the state budget, MMSD is expected to see a 5-10% aid loss next year. Additional spending in 2014-15 would only increase the expected aid loss. For every two dollars ($2) MMSD spends above the secondary cost ceiling, we lose one dollar ($1) in equalization aid.

Second, the 2015-16 revenue budget forecast is very uncertain. It is outside of the current two-year state budget, the framework which determines school district revenues. Therefore, we recommend carrying over the $3.7 million to provide sufficient revenues to meet the needs of the 2015-16 school year.

The uncertainty of 2015-16 revenues, along with anticipated cost pressures on next year’s budget, including health insurance costs and increased technology investments, to name just two factors, make it essential that unused tax levy authority is preserved and carried-over into 2015-16.

1. Facing a major aid loss in 2013-14, the district ‘under-levied’ by $8.8 million to hold the tax levy increase to 3.384% on 0.35% tax base growth.

The District continues to use a single data point analysis for “State Aid” or redistributed state dollars. The District received a substantial increase in state tax dollars during the prior year….

Much more on the District’s 2014-2015 budget, here.

Inspired By NYU, GESO Reemerges In Force

Paul Bass:

“GESO—you are workers. The work you do is important,” Tyisha Walker told the crowd. Walker (pictured after delivering her remarks) is secretary treasurer of UNITE HERE Local 35, which represents Yale’s blue-collar workers; and a West River alder. She responded to the second, less-spoken case opponents have made against GESO in its earlier incarnation: That Yale’s blue-collar and pink-collar unionized workers will show up at rallies for the graduate students in order to earn their return support in contract battles with the university, but they’ll never risk their own jobs and go out on strike for GESO. “We stand with you,” Walker declared.

The economic impact of school suspensions

Lucia Graves:

Tiambrya Jenkins was just 14 years old when she got into a fistfight that would change the course of her educational trajectory. Following an after-school scuffle between Jenkins and a white classmate, the two girls—both freshmen at Rome High School in Georgia—were transferred to an alternative school as punishment. Her white classmate was allowed to return to their original school after 90 days. But Jenkins spent the rest of the year at the transitional academy, a place she describes as more like prison than school. “It was really, really boring. You just sat there all day until the bell rang,” she says. “They didn’t teach us anything.”

At the academy, minor missteps such as talking out of turn or violating the dress code were used as reasons to delay a student’s return to high school, Jenkins says. Simple organizational mistakes like showing up late or forgetting class materials were seen as acts of defiance and could turn the clock back to zero on a student’s 90 days at the transitional academy. After forgetting her notebook one day and suffering the consequences, Jenkins began stashing spares in an abandoned house across the street from the school, “just in case.”

Two years later, Jenkins is back at her old high school, but she still feels hopelessly behind. Once a top math student, she’ll be lucky to achieve a passing mark in advanced algebra this year. “I don’t even know what we’re learning,” Jenkins says. “The teacher, she’ll be teaching something, and I don’t even know what it is. I just see a bunch of numbers on the board.”

Much more on discipline and school violence, here.

One City: New School, New Look, Great Progress

Kaleem Caire, via a kind email:

We’ve been quiet because we’ve been building. We have some exciting updates to share with you as we move forward to establish One City Early Learning Centers on Madison’s South Side. Since August, we have:

Established a 15-member Board of Directors
Filed for nonprofit recognition with the IRS
Identified a site for our preschool on Fisher Street
Selected our logo mark (see above)
Identified an exceptional Director for our school
Recruited some wonderful volunteers
Secured the support, guidance and encouragement of key stakeholders in early childhood education, the Greater Madison community and the State of Wisconsin

Now, the heavy push to secure partnerships and financial support to get this preschool open begins. We would love to hear from you if you can help. Please email or contact us at our information below.

We hope to share the details of our plans and our excitement about this preschool with every single person we know, because this is that important. We’d love to share our plans with you, your friends and your colleagues at your home, office, service group, place of worship or community organization. To download the one page summary on One City, click here. We’ve also placed two short videos below that speak to the critical need for communities to nurture and support children early. Watch. Learn. Be inspired. We are!

Our mission: To prepare young children from birth to age 5 for success in school and life, and ensure they enter grade school reading-ready.

Our vision: A Greater Madison where every child is reading and succeeding at grade level by the time they complete third grade.

Our philosophy: A child’s ecosystem of support and the environments in which they are educated and raised must be healthy, safe, inspiring and provide adequate resources and stability in order for them to reach their full potential.

Our focus: Strong children, families and neighborhoods. Wherever we develop a One City preschool, we will also work to strengthen families, build community and partner with residents to develop the neighborhood. If the family and the village are healthy, the children will be, too.

We hope you will join us on this journey. Thank you.

Much more on Kaleem Caire’s relentless drive to improve rigor and opportunity in Madison.

A childhood gift that says ‘I believe in you’ becomes a lifetime of meaning

Alan Borsuk:

The service counter guy at the hardware store understood what he was looking at as soon as he saw the screw. “This is from some old, special chair,” he told my wife when she stopped in on Monday.

Right. A chair with a special story that, I suggest, speaks to some of the core aspects of what can lead a child to a successful life.

My father was a very talented pianist as a child. In his early teens, he soloed with the Madison symphony, playing Gershwin’s Concerto in F. He loved piano and he had great potential.

My grandparents ran a corner grocery store near the University of Wisconsin campus. They and their five children lived in a small apartment over the store. This was the mid-1930s, the height of the Depression, so you know they didn’t have much.

One afternoon, my father came home from high school, climbed the stairs, and, as he tells the story, nearly fell to the floor. A Steinway grand piano was sitting in the living room.

Can you imagine the sacrifice my grandparents made to get that piano? That’s how important their children were to them. That’s how much they wanted to do all they could to help their children reach their potential and have a good life.

And those children did have good lives. They graduated from high school. They went to college. They worked, they married, and they were good citizens of communities as big as New York City, as small as Two Rivers. Each in his or her own way did well.

Finally shred the New York City charter-school Cap

James Merriman:

This month, New York State approved 17 new city charter schools to open over the next few years. Sadly, they could be among the last.

Sometime in 2015, New York State will have to stop approving new charters. That’s not because these schools haven’t proven themselves (their achievement often far exceeds that of the districts they reside in). It’s not because there isn’t enough demand (50,000 families are on waitlists).

Rather, it’s because state law currently caps the number of charters allowed to open, and we’ve almost reached the limit.

Putting the brakes on a wildly successful education strategy is bad policy. It’s terrible for the city’s kids, thousands of whom will be denied schools that have shown they can close the achievement gap in some of our most disadvantaged neighborhoods.

There is an obvious answer: Simply eliminate this arbitrary and artificial barrier to creating more great public schools. After all, we’ve already twice raised the number of charter schools that can be opened in New York City, from 100 to 200 in 2007 and then again by another 114 in 2010.

The riddle of black America’s rising woes under Obama

Edward Luce:

A paradox haunts America’s first black president. African-American wealth has fallen further under Barack Obama than under any president since the Depression. Yet they are the only group that still gives him high ratings. So meagre is Mr Obama’s national approval rating that embattled Democrats have made him unwelcome in states that twice swept him to power. Those who have fared worst under Mr Obama are the ones who love him the most. You would be hard-pressed to find a better example of perception-driven politics. As the Reverend Kevin Johnson asked in 2013: “Why are we so loyal to a president who isn’t loyal to us?”

The problem has taken on new salience with the resignation of Eric Holder. America’s first black attorney-general has tried to correct the gulag-sized disparities in prison sentencing between blacks and whites. His exit leaves just two African-Americans in Mr Obama’s cabinet. Given the mood among Republicans, it is hard to imagine the US Senate confirming a successor to Mr Holder who shares his priorities.

Mr Obama shot to prominence in 2004 when he said there was no black or white America, just the United States of America. Yet as the continuing backlash to the police shooting of an unarmed young black man in Ferguson has reminded us, Mr Obama will leave the US at least as segregated as he found it. How could that be? The fair answer is that he is not to blame. The poor suffered the brunt of the Great Recession and blacks are far likelier to be poor. By any yardstick – the share of those with subprime mortgages, for example, or those working in casualised jobs – African-Americans were more directly in the line of fire.

Study Finds Gains for Students at Manhattan Charter With High Teacher Pay

Leslie Brody:

A small New York City charter school opened five years ago with an attention-grabbing premise: Paying teachers $125,000 salaries would lure ace faculty and help poor children learn.

A new study of the middle school, called The Equity Project, suggests that the experiment is working. The report to be released Friday by Mathematica Policy Research said the school’s students made more progress than similar children attending traditional city schools.

After four years at the charter school, eighth-graders showed average test score gains in math equal to an additional year and a half of school, compared with district students. The study found these charter students’ gains equaled more than an extra half-year in science and almost an extra half-year in English.

The Equity Project made headlines in 2008 when it announced it would pay nearly double the average salary of teachers in the city’s district schools. Joshua Furgeson, one of the report’s authors, said it shows that a “school that focuses its resources and attention on hiring and developing the best teachers can substantially improve student achievement.”

The Changing Profile of Student Borrowers Biggest Increase in Borrowing Has Been Among More Affluent Students

Richard Fry:

Share of College Graduates From High-Income Families who Borrow Has DoubledIn 2012, a record share of the nation’s new college graduates (69%) had taken out student loans to finance their education, and the typical amount they had borrowed was more than twice that of college graduates 20 years ago. A new Pew Research Center analysis of recently released government data finds that the increase in the rate of borrowing over the past two decades has been much greater among graduates from more affluent families than among those from low-income families. Fully half of the 2012 graduates from high-income families borrowed money for college, double the share that borrowed in 1992-93.

The rise in the rate of borrowing was also substantial among upper-middle-income graduates, with 62% of 2012 graduates from upper-middle-income households leaving college with debt, compared with 34% roughly 20 years ago.

The State of Education Reform

Chester Finn:

This short essay cannot begin to say all that deserves to be said about the state of ed-reform in America in 2014, but it gives me an opportunity to do some stocktaking, recount a bit of history, and flag some challenges for the future.

Organizationally, the modern Thomas B. Fordham Institute and the Foundation that birthed it have been around for seventeen years, but the reformist zeal and philosophy that it inherited from the Educational Excellence Network carry us back to 1981. Two years before A Nation at Risk, Diane Ravitch and I—and a handful of fellow travelers—had concluded that American K–12 education needed a kick in the pants, a kick toward greater quality, primarily in the form of stronger student learning. (More of that tale can be found on our website here and here.)

That’s thirty-three years ago, before many of today’s ed reformers were even born, and, while Diane has obviously deviated from that path in recent years, I like to think I’ve continued to trudge down it, along with an ever-growing cadre of fellow reformers and—since 1997—with Fordham’s organizational and human resources pushing us onward.

It turns out millennials are actually really good at saving money

Jonelle Marte:

Millennials are looking beyond beach vacations and nights out when it comes to finding the best way to use their cash.

More of them are putting money away for retirement, according to a new analysis released Thursday by Bank of America Merrill Lynch. About 40,000 workers in their 20s and early 30s signed up for their employer’s 401(k) plan for the first time during the first half of this year, the report found. That is up 55 percent from the same time last year and more than the 37 percent increase seen for all age groups.

“If you look at the millennials, they’re actually by nature better savers,” says Kevin Crain, managing director and senior relationship executive for Bank of America Merrill Lynch. The bank analyzed data from its 401(k) business, which has $128.9 billion in assets and includes 2.5 million participants.

Successful but stressed, students urged to find balance

Kelly Meyerhofer:

Nicolet High School senior Sammi Castle juggles three Advanced Placement courses, an internship, two honors classes, four extracurricular clubs and two sports.

Winter is Castle’s off-season, but a soccer boot camp is starting next week. This “strongly encouraged” program runs twice a week until as late as 10 p.m. even though the season does not start until March.

She’s also in the midst of completing seven college applications.

“Everyone’s driven,” Castle said. “But everyone’s also sick of it.”

Welcome to the life of a Nicolet High School student — and a jam-packed schedule that has become, for many high-achieving high school students, all too typical.

Kenneth Ginsburg spoke this week to Nicolet, Shorewood and Whitefish Bay High School students about how to handle the stress and expectations attached to their diplomas. And although his message was geared to the trio of high-performing North Shore high schools, it would have resonated across the metro area in suburban schools that cater to families that are comparatively affluent.

Museum of Soviet Calculators On the Web – Forum A forum dedicated to collecting and describing mechanical, electro-mechanical, and electronic calculating machines from the former Soviet Union.

Taswegian:

A forum dedicated to collecting and describing mechanical, electro-mechanical, and electronic calculating machines from the former Soviet Union.

Customize Learning and Move Students Away from Memorizing and Regurgitating

Nick Grantham:

In this fascinating and inspiring TEDx talk, Philip Kovacs, Associate Professor of Education at UAH in Huntsville, discusses how he is working to convince schools and school systems to stop using textbooks and instead to harness the power of the web.

I first came across Philip’s work after reading a brilliant piece he wrote titled An Open Letter to My Son’s Kindergarten Teacher. If you haven’t read it, then get onto it immediately, if you have, then I am sure you will enjoy his thought provoking video below.

Brain-Training Companies Get Advice From Some Academics, Criticism From Others

Rebecca Koenig:

With metaphors like those, brain-game companies entice people to buy subscriptions to their online training programs, many of which promise to increase customers’ “neuroplasticity,” “fluid intelligence,” and working memory capacity. They even claim to help stave off the effects of aging.

Leading scientists have criticized those promises, though. The loudest objection came on Monday, when the Stanford Center for Longevity and the Max Planck Institute for Human Development, in Berlin, released “A Consensus on the Brain-Training Industry From the Scientific Community,” a statement objecting “to the claim that brain games offer consumers a scientifically grounded avenue to reduce or reverse cognitive decline.”

A Math Teacher on Common Core

Brooke Powers:

Before Common Core I was a typical math teacher. I had my curriculum maps and and state standards which read like a skill and drill check list that I marked off one by one whether the kids understood them or not. I used really “great” methods and math terminology like “butterfly method”, “keep switch flip”, “leave opposite opposite”, and so many more that I would love to forget. I moved to Kentucky the year that KCAS (Kentucky’s Common Core) was adopted and thought “how different could it be?” The answer to that question can be answered easily with a quick peak inside my classroom today.

Today, my classroom is cognitively busy and alive with excitement about numbers. We no longer focus on skills, timed tests, facts, or catchy phrases to make students remember things that have no meaning to them. Today, we do math talks, counting circles, estimating, and reasoning instead of direct instruction. We take the time to understand numbers and their meanings rather than memorizing facts. I don’t drill random formulas and information into students heads so that they can remember it long enough to pass a test rather than understanding it to a depth that can be applied to real life.

I really do understand the reason so many parents seem to get upset about the “new math” associated with Common Core. After all, it is change and change is difficult but here is what I know. I have talked to tons of adults and not one has told me that they have to take skill and drill tests daily at work or risk being fired. When I ask what they have to do at work I get a lot of answers but there is always a common theme, in real life we are no longer asked to use math as a check list of skills that we either know or don’t know. Instead real life is about using the math to solve real problems, to be a critical thinker, to reason, and actually understand what is happening around them. Those are all the things along with many more that Common Core has brought to my classroom.

Much more on the Common Core, here.

Related: Math Forum Audio & Video.

Shift in NJEA’s stance on charter schools fraught with tension

Laura Waters:

The New Jersey Senate Education Committee heard testimony on Sen. Teresa Ruiz’s new charter school bill on Oct. 16. One of the lobbyists there was New Jersey Education Association President Wendell Steinhauer. As he approached the podium you couldn’t help but feel sorry for him. This well-spoken and diplomatic head of New Jersey’s primary teachers’ union was in a bind, compelled to triangulate between the NJEA’s historically consistent support for these independent public schools and a swelling rebellion within union ranks demanding a more combative stance against charters.

Indeed, teacher union leaders like Steinhauer are in an increasingly difficult position. For more than a century political alliances have been easy and predictable: teacher unions were umbilically tied to the Democratic Party and, really, moderates of any ilk. But suddenly a more radical faction is forcing union leaders to shift from that safe center and, as Steinhauer did last week, testify against sensible updates to charter-school law and other reforms.

Locally, a majority of the Madison School Board rejected the proposed Madison Preparatory Academy IB charter school.

IS imposes new rules on education in Syria, Iraq

Ali Mamouri:

The Islamic State (IS) project goes beyond making a political change for the region’s map. The organization seeks a comprehensive and fundamental change at all levels, whether culturally, socially, economically or politically. It is a major ideological revolution akin to the communist revolutions in Russia and China.

Commonly, such ideological revolutions introduce radical cultural changes in the educational system, as soon as the groups that have launched them take up the reins of political power. Cultural goals are the main priorities of these groups, which view political power merely as a means to achieve these goals.

This has already happened in Russia, China, Iran and other countries that witnessed ideological revolutions and coups. The nature of the cultural changes differs according to the pattern and nature of these revolutions.

The communist revolutions sought to eliminate the bourgeoisie’s power from educational and cultural systems. The Islamic revolution in Iran, on the other hand, aimed at the Islamization of science and knowledge by eliminating scientific and scholarly theories that are not in line with their religious visions, expelling teachers from schools and universities who do not abide by religious disciplines.

Rejecting Common Core & Rigor?

Stephanie Simon:

“We should be completely prepared for lots of folks to get cold feet starting now,” said Andy Smarick, a policy analyst at Bellwether Education Partners. States that have already moved to Common Core tests have seen student scores plunge and parent protests soar — and as the spring testing season creeps closer, similar outcomes “are staring our leaders in the face” in states from coast to coast, he said.

“Claims of ‘We’re not ready,’ and ‘This will be too disruptive’ are sure to spike,” Smarick said.

The nascent district rebellion comes against a backdrop of growing public frustration with standardized testing in general. In New York last spring, as many as 60,000 students refused to take the state’s Common Core tests. Similar opt-out movements have swelled in states from Georgia to Connecticut to California, where a coalition called “Pencils Down” has been organizing parents to boycott the exams.

A few teachers in Florida and Colorado have even staged small mutinies of their own, announcing that they would not give standardized tests to their students. A public letter from a Colorado teacher titled “I refuse to administer the PARCC” caught fire on social media last month.
Supporters of the Common Core have taken note of the public mood and tried to get ahead of iti/blockquote>

Vatican Library Puts 4,000 Ancient Manuscripts Available Online For Free

Message to Eagle:

The Vatican Apostolic Library is now digitising its valuable ancient religious manuscripts and putting them online via its website, available for the public to view for free, as well as turning to crowdfunding to help it complete its work.

The Vatican Library was founded in 1451 AD and holds over 80,000 manuscripts, prints, drawings, plates and incunabula (books printed prior to 1500 AD) written throughout history by people of different faiths from across the world.

Big data is coming to education; the next step is figuring out how to use it

OETC:

Big data is coming to education; the next step is figuring out how to use it.

Horace Dediu is an expert at using big data to understand technology’s accelerating development. He has been interviewed by Forbes, Fortune, and various other news sources as an Apple expert, and his independent blog, Asymco, is filled with facts and data regarding mobile communication products and the companies that create and sell them. Dediu’s model is the opposite of that of most analysts: he charges for his opinions but offers all of his data for free. On November 7 at Impact Hub, Dediu will share both data and opinions with educational leaders at SPARK Seattle 2014.

With the upcoming educational leadership event in mind, we conducted a brief personal interview with Dediu. Read the full interview below!

K-12 Tax & Spending Climate: the Midwest Declines while the South Rises

Aaron Renn:

This is an absolute blowout, with a massive amount of red on the map showing areas to which Chicago is actually losing young adults. Honestly, this only makes sense given the well known headline negative domestic migration numbers for Chicago.

I do find it interesting that there’s a strong draw from Michigan. Clearly Michigan has taken a decade plus long beating. There’s been strong net out-migration from Michigan to many other Midwestern cities during that time frame, and its the same in Cleveland, which also took an economic beating in the last decade. This is just an impression so I don’t want to overstate, but it seems to me that a disproportionate number of the stories about brain drain to Chicago give examples from Michigan. Longworth uses the examples of Detroit and Cleveland. These would appear to be the places where the argument has been truly legitimate, but that doesn’t mean you can extrapolate generally from there.

What’s more, even if a young person with a college degree does move to Chicago from somewhere else, will they stay there long term? They may circulate out back to where they came from or somewhere else after absorbing skills and experience. It’s the same with New York, DC, SF, etc. I’ve said these places should be viewed as human capital refineries, much like universities. That’s not a bad thing at all. In fact, it’s a big plus for everybody all around. Chicago is doing fine there. But it’s a more complex talent dynamic than is generally presented, a presentation that does not seem to be backed up by the data in any case.

Related: Madison’s planned property tax increase.

Comparing Madison & College Station, TX….

California Superintendent of Public Instruction Candidates

KCRW

A surprise for California voters: the hottest race in next month’s statewide election is for Superintendent of Public Instruction, a nonpartisan office with limited powers. Incumbent Tom Torlakson and challenger Marshall Tuck embody both sides of the national conflict over public education—which has made for a close race. We’ll talk to them both about teacher tenure, standardized testing, and John Deasy, former Superintendent of the LAUSD.

Getting the IT education you need without the debt: Could studying abroad be the answer?

Andrada Fiscutean:

Students who want to dodge the tens of thousands of euros in fees and living expenses that come with getting a degree in IT might want to consider Romania.

Landing a good job in technology often means spending several years at university, and racking up a huge bill. However, there are ways to cut the cost of education, including studying abroad. Romania, Europe’s software development powerhouse, could prove a cheaper option worth considering: fees are only a fraction of those found in the UK or US, and a student with a part-time job can break even at the end of the year. Student essentials, too, are wallet-friendly: students at Bucharest’s campus Regie can land themselves a large pizza for a mere €3, for example.

Compare and contrast to monolithic K-12 models.

Teaching to the Authentic Assessment

Barry Garelick, via a kind email:

Back in September, when I was doing my sub-assignment for the high school, I attended a math department meeting the day before school began. Sally from the District office presided, and among the many things she told us at that session was that this year the students in the District would not have to take what is known as the STAR test, by order of the superintendent of the District. “And as you know, the Superintendent is like the Pope. What he says goes.”

While this last was uttered partly in jest, the reaction in the room was celebratory. The STAR exam has been an annual ritual in California and in May of each year about two weeks are devoted to a review and prep for this test, which is keyed to California’s pre-Common Core math and English standards. Such activities inspire accusations that schools are “teaching to the test”. But now in the midst of a transition to implementing Common Core math standards, California was looking at the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC) exam that would be given officially starting the following school year. (Actually, they don’t call it an exam; they call it an “assessment”. You’ll forgive me if I call it an exam.) For now, however, the state would be field testing the exam. What this meant was anyone’s guess: perhaps this first go-round on SBAC would be to provide a baseline to see how students scored prior to full implementation of Common Core. Or perhaps it was to fine tune the questions. Or both. Or neither.

In any event, when I started my new assignment at the middle school, I had to have my classes take a practice SBAC exam. The day before I was to take all my classes into the computer lab for the practice exam, I attended an after-school faculty meeting.

I had started my assignment at the school earlier that week, so the principal introduced me to the group. I was welcomed by applause, and urgings by fellow teachers to help myself to the tangerines that were brought in for the occasion. I took two tangerines, and as if he were taking that as his cue, the principal started the discussion.

Better Ways to Teach Teens to Drive

Sue Shellenbarger:

It’s one of the most dreaded rites of child-rearing—teaching a teenager to drive.

Many parents are riding shotgun with their teens for 40 hours or more to provide the supervised practice required to get a driver’s license in most states. Most do a good job of teaching steering, parking and controlling the car. Parents are not so good, however, at teaching the skills young drivers need to actually avoid accidents, according to new research. Now, there are new techniques and even guides that have grown out of new scientific research into the parent-child dynamic in the car.

Suzy Hoyle of Wallingford, Pa., has taught two of her three children to drive. “It’s a scary ride,” she says, “but I think it’s very important they gain confidence and learn that they can do it.” She has picked up tips from friends (have your teen drive on snow, stash the cellphone in the glove compartment) and refrained from criticizing her daughter Ashley, now 18, when she hugged the right shoulder, uncomfortably close to several trees.