Teachers and principals in Russian schools say the government is providing more money for education, but discouraging critical examination of Soviet history. Meanwhile parents complain that widespread bribery for good grades is eroding standards.
It’s Not OK To Treat People Special Based on Race, But it is OK based on the “Neighborhood”
Legal Pad (Cal Law) via a kind reader’s email:
That’s the gist we got out of the First District’s ruling today, in a constitutional challenge to Berkeley’s way-complicated system for assigning students to different elementary schools, and to different programs in high school. The upshot: The appeals court unanimously said Berkeley’s system is A-OK, despite Prop 209, because it doesn’t consider a student’s own race at all. Instead, all students in a neighborhood are treated the same — and the way the neighborhood is treated is based on a bunch of things, like average income level, average education level, and the neighborhood’s overall racial composition. The court’s opinion calls things like this “affirmative policies” fostering social diversity. That term doesn’t sound familiar at all.
The Opinion 49K PDF
Perhaps this is what new Madison School District Superintendent Dan Nerad had in mind:
Still, Nerad has clearly taken notice. Given the new numbers, he plans to ask state lawmakers to allow Madison to deny future requests based on family income levels, rather than race, to prevent disparities from further growing between Madison and its suburbs.
2009/2010 Madison Open Enrollment information. Much more on Wisconsin Open Enrollment here.
Giving up A’s and B’s for 4’s and 3’s…..
There is no more A for effort at Prospect Hill Elementary School.
Parents have complained that since the new grading system is based on year-end expectations, 4s are generally not available until the final marking period.
In fact, there are no more A’s at all. Instead of letter grades in English or math, schoolchildren in this well-to-do Westchester suburb now get report cards filled with numbers indicating how they are faring on dozens of specific skills like “decoding strategies” and “number sense and operations.” The lowest mark, 1, indicates a student is not meeting New York State’s academic standards, while the top grade of 4 celebrates “meeting standards with distinction.”
They are called standards-based report cards, part of a new system flourishing around the country as the latest frontier in a 20-year push to establish rigorous academic standards and require state tests on the material.
Educators praise them for setting clear expectations, but many parents who chose to live in Pelham because of its well-regarded schools find them confusing or worse. Among their complaints are that since the new grades are based on year-end expectations, 4s are generally not available until the final marking period (school officials are planning to tweak this aspect next year).
“We’re running around the school saying ‘2 is cool,’ ” said Jennifer Lapey, a parent who grew up in Pelham, “but in my world, 2 out of 4 is not so cool.”
Much more on standards based report cards here.
Goal of Preschool for All Tests Education System
When Mateus Bontempo started preschool at a public school in Long Branch, N.J., he rarely talked and was so shy he’d stand in the classroom doorway until a teacher came to escort him inside.
Anna Dasilva, his mother, says educators worked with Mateus on his social skills, sometimes taking him to other classrooms to meet new children. Four years later, the eight-year-old third grader plays trumpet, participates in math competitions and performs in plays. “They really helped him along,” says Mrs. Dasilva, who thinks all children should have the same preschool opportunity.
So does President Barack Obama. As one of the main goals of his education plan, he wants to spend $10 billion to encourage states to offer universal preschool and expand federal early-learning programs like Head Start. The recently passed stimulus bill includes half that spending goal, or $5 billion, for Head Start and related early-childhood efforts.
But the current economic crisis may blunt state-level efforts to broaden access to preschool. Even in better times, building a “universal” preschool system would likely be a slow and expensive proposition, given the patchwork nature of what currently exists.
And as state and federal efforts target early learning programs toward disadvantaged students, some middle-class parents feel that their children are being left out. According to a recent study by Pre-K Now, families earning more than about $40,000 a year are already ineligible for free preschool in most of the 20 states that use income to determine eligibility.
Why College Towns are Looking Smart
ooking for a job? Try a college town.
Morgantown, W.Va., home to West Virginia University, has one of the lowest unemployment rates in the U.S. — just 3.9% — and the university itself has about 260 job openings, from nurses to professors to programmers.
“We’re hurting for people, especially to fill our computer and technical positions,” says Margaret Phillips, vice president for human relations at WVU.
Of the six metropolitan areas with unemployment below 4% as of January, three of them are considered college towns. One is Morgantown. The other two are Logan, Utah, home of Utah State University, and Ames, Iowa, home of Iowa State University. Both have just 3.8% unemployment, based on Labor Department figures that are not seasonally adjusted.
The pattern holds true for many other big college towns, such as Gainesville, Fla., Ann Arbor, Mich., Manhattan, Kan., and Boulder, Colo. In stark contrast, the unadjusted national unemployment rate is 8.5%.
While college towns have long been considered recession-resistant, their ability to avoid the depths of the financial crisis shaking the rest of the nation is noteworthy. The ones faring the best right now are not only major education centers; they also are regional health-care hubs that draw people into the city and benefit from a stable, educated, highly skilled work force.
Allonzo Trier Is in the Game
After school on a recent afternoon, Allonzo Trier, a sixth grader in Federal Way, outside Seattle, came home and quickly changed into his workout gear — Nike high-tops, baggy basketball shorts and a sleeveless T-shirt that hung loosely on his 5-foot-5, 110-pound frame. Inside a small gymnasium near the entrance of his apartment complex, he got right to his practice routine, one he has maintained for the last four years, seven days a week. He began by dribbling a basketball around the perimeter of the court, weaving it around his back and through his legs. After a few minutes, he took a second basketball out of a mesh bag and dribbled both balls, crisscrossing them through his legs. It looked like showboating, Harlem Globetrotters kind of stuff, but the drills, which Trier discovered on the Internet, were based on the childhood workouts of Pete Maravich and have helped nurture his exquisite control of the ball in game settings — and, by extension, his burgeoning national reputation.
One of the Web sites that tracks young basketball prospects reports that Trier plays with “style and punch” and “handles the pill” — the ball — “like a yo-yo.” He is a darling of the so-called grass-roots basketball scene and a star on the A.A.U. circuit — which stands for Amateur Athletic Union but whose practices mock traditional definitions of amateurism.
L.A. district to end high-profile dropout-prevention program
A high-profile and lauded dropout-prevention program is falling victim to budget cuts — although top Los Angeles school officials insist that they’ll provide a more effective program in its place.
The precarious Diploma Project is emblematic of the financial crisis slowly working its way across the nation’s second-largest school system as ripples of a statewide budget shortfall touch counselors, teachers and other school employees whose work directly affects children enrolled in the Los Angeles Unified School District.
Nearly 9,000 employees — about 10% of the full-time workforce — received notice of a possible layoff this month as the district seeks to cut hundreds of millions of dollars from its nearly $6-billion general fund. But there’s more going on than financial pain.
Reshaping system
After taking the helm in January, Supt. Ramon C. Cortines, one of the country’s most experienced educators, has attempted to reshape the school system. Cortines is seizing the moment to trim or gut some of the central bureaucracy, while also moving dollars and responsibility to schools. The superintendent wants schools to decide for themselves whether to pay for additional counselors, arts programs and librarians, among other things.
The new setup must save money, but it also should be more effective, he said.
The Education Wars
Like any successful negotiator, Randi Weingarten can sense when the time for compromise is nigh. On Nov. 17, after the Election Day dust had cleared, Weingarten, the president of both the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and its New York City affiliate, the United Federation of Teachers, gave a major speech at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. In attendance were a host of education-policy luminaries, including Weingarten’s sometimes-foe Mayor Michael Bloomberg of New York City, Service Employees International Union President Andy Stern, National Education Association (NEA) President Dennis van Roekel, and Rep. George Miller of California.
“No issue should be off the table, provided it is good for children and fair for teachers,” Weingarten vowed, referencing debates within the Democratic coalition over charter schools and performance pay for teachers — innovations that teachers’ unions traditionally held at arm’s length.
The first openly gay president of a major American labor union, Weingarten is small — both short and slight. But she speaks in the commanding, practiced tones of a unionist. In speeches, newspaper op-eds, and public appearances, Weingarten, once known as a guns-blazing New York power broker, has been trying to carve out a conciliatory role for herself in the national debate over education policy. It is a public-relations strategy clearly crafted for the Obama era: an effort to focus on common ground instead of long-simmering differences.
Notably absent from the audience for Weingarten’s post-election speech was D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee. In the summer of 2007, Rhee, a Teach For America alumna and founder of the anti-union New Teacher Project, took office and quickly implemented an agenda of school closings, teacher and principal firings, and a push toward merit pay. These actions met with their fair share of outrage from both parents and teachers and especially from the local teachers’ union. At the time of Weingarten’s speech, Rhee and the AFT-affiliated Washington Teachers’ Union (WTU) were stalemated over a proposed new contract for teachers.
Keeping coaches in check
Rosanlind Rossi & Steve Tucker:
Chicago public school coaches are in for a crackdown under a proposed city policy that explicitly bans everything from pushing, pinching or paddling athletes to “displays of temper.”
The massive overhaul of the Chicago Public High Schools Athletic Association bylaws follows allegations that began emerging last fall that at least four CPS coaches had paddled or hit athletes.
The new policy creates the possibility that coaches can be banned for life for just one rule violation. Previously, such punishment followed only “knowing and repeated” rule violations.
It also mandates annual coaching training, requires that all coaches undergo criminal background checks and fingerprint analysis, and establishes a “pool” of thoroughly screened candidates from which principals must now pick their coaches.
Prohibitions against corporal punishment and even “forcing a student to stand or kneel for an inordinate time” were listed elsewhere in CPS policy, but after the paddling scandal, CPS wanted to take a clear stand against a wide variety of corporal punishment, said CPS counsel Patrick Rocks.
Strip-Search of Girl Tests Limit of School Policy
Savana Redding still remembers the clothes she had on — black stretch pants with butterfly patches and a pink T-shirt — the day school officials here forced her to strip six years ago. She was 13 and in eighth grade.
An assistant principal, enforcing the school’s antidrug policies, suspected her of having brought prescription-strength ibuprofen pills to school. One of the pills is as strong as two Advils.
The search by two female school employees was methodical and humiliating, Ms. Redding said. After she had stripped to her underwear, “they asked me to pull out my bra and move it from side to side,” she said. “They made me open my legs and pull out my underwear.”
Ms. Redding, an honors student, had no pills. But she had a furious mother and a lawyer, and now her case has reached the Supreme Court, which will hear arguments on April 21.
Public money for private schools?
Lawmaker: S.C.’s schools fail minorities; state should subsidize private school choice.
State Sen. Robert Ford is putting a new face on the long-running fight over whether to spend public education dollars to pay for private schools.
To the dismay of his African American colleagues, the Charleston Democrat is hawking a bill that would give students a publicly paid scholarship or tuition grant to go to a private school.
So far, the push for school choice has had mostly white faces out front. But Ford, who is seeking the Democratic nomination for governor, is making the case that the students who would benefit most from a voucher-style program in South Carolina are African Americans who attend poorly performing schools.
He dismisses those who say his program would hurt already struggling public schools, framing the argument as a choice between protecting schools or giving children the lifeline they need to succeed.
“You’re damn right I’m hurting public education, because public education is hurting our kids,” Ford said.
Wider testing to ID kids
Rhonda Bodfield
Arizona Daily Star
Even as schools across the state brace for sky-is-falling budget cuts, the Tucson Unified School District program for gifted and talented students is prepping for dramatic growth in the next school year.
The district plans to double the number of students it tests — up to 10,000 — and will send postcards to every family about testing opportunities.
As a result of state and federal requirements, it also will begin offering gifted classes for kindergartners and for juniors and seniors in high school.
Currently, parents request testing to see if their children qualify. That’s a system that can be full of pitfalls in lower-income areas where parents miss the newsletter because they may be working two jobs, for example, or where language barriers might lead to missed deadlines, let alone confusion over how to access the program.
Parents in dark about kids’ school life
Becta has warned that a three-way communication breakdown between schools, parents and kids could have a harmful affect on individuals’ educational performance.
Unsurprisingly the UK government’s technology agency, which published a new report today, was keen to underline what it sees as the importance of IT in the classroom to help improve parent dialogue with their children.
Becta surveyed 1,000 school kids aged seven to 14 and 1,000 parents to find out the level of ill communication that existed between adults and children when it comes to talking about school.
It found more than a third (37 per cent) of kids had difficulty speaking to their parents about their education, while 43 per cent of parents questioned admitted they struggled to get information from their child about their school day.
According to the Oh, Nothing Much report, eight in ten parents confessed they didn’t know as much about their kids’ day at school as they would like.
The Ethics of DNA Databasing: The House Believes That People’s DNA Sequences are Their Business and Nobody Else’s
An online debate at The Economist:: Professor Arthur Caplan:
Emmanuel and Robert Hart Professor of Bioethics and Director, Centre for Bioethics, Penn University
There are, it is increasingly said, plenty of reasons why people you know and many you don’t ought to have access to your DNA or data that are derived from it. Have you ever had sexual relations outside a single, monogamous relationship? Well then, any children who resulted from your hanky-panky might legitimately want access to your DNA to establish paternity or maternity.
Craig Venter, Against:
As we progress from the first human genome to sequence hundreds, then thousands and then millions of individual genomes, the value for medicine and humanity will only come from the availability and analysis of comprehensive, public databases containing all these genome sequences along with as complete as possible phenotype descriptions of the individuals.
In Favor of Arlene Silveira for the Madison School Board
Races for the Madison School Board, once among the most intense of local electoral competitions, have been a lot quieter in recent years. The more cooperative and functional character of the board, combined with a more responsive approach to community concerns, is confirmed by the fact that many voters are unaware that there is even a contest for one of the two seats that will be filled April 7.
While Seat 2 incumbent Lucy Mathiak, a serious and engaged board member, is unopposed, School Board President Arlene Silveira faces Donald Gors for Seat 1.
We’re glad that Gors, a parent and business owner, is making the race. It is good to have the competition. But even as he launched his run, Gors admitted, “I don’t really know anything about the people on the board or where they stand.”
College Prestige Lies
Over the next two weeks my eldest son will be rejected by some colleges, accepted by others. And then we’ll likely have to make a hard choice, between cheap state schools and expensive prestigious ones. A colleague told me the best econ paper on this found it doesn’t matter. From its 1999 abstract:
We matched students who applied to, and were accepted by, similar colleges to try to eliminate this bias. Using the … High School Class of 1972, we find that students who attended more selective colleges earned about the same [20 years later] as students of seemingly comparable ability who attended less selective schools. Children from low-income families, however, earned more if they attended selective colleges.
A 2006 NYT article confirms this:
Higher education experts have this message … Pay less attention to prestige and more to “fit” — the marriage of interests and comfort level with factors like campus size, access to professors, instruction philosophy. … A 1999 study by Alan B. Krueger … and Stacy Dale … found that students who were admitted to both selective and moderately selective colleges earned the same no matter which they attended.
Saying “When” on DC School Vouchers
I’m not trying to be a hypocrite. I have supported D.C. school vouchers. The program has used tax dollars well in transferring impoverished students to private schools with higher standards than D.C. public schools. But it has reached a dead end. Congress should fund the 1,713 current voucher recipients until they graduate from high school but stop new enrollments and find a more promising use of the money.
That exasperation you hear is from my friend and former boss, the brilliant Washington Post editorial writer who has been eviscerating Democrats in Congress for trying to kill D.C. vouchers. We don’t identify the authors of our unsigned editorials, but her in-your-face style is unmistakable and her arguments morally unassailable.
My problems with what is formally known as the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program are political and cultural, not moral. The program provides up to $7,500 a year for private-school tuition for poor children at an annual cost of about $12 million. Vouchers help such kids, but not enough of them. The vouchers are too at odds with the general public view of education. They don’t have much of a future.
Detroit prep school helps students get back on track
The silence is striking at Barsamian Preparatory Center. And so are the violence prevention therapy sessions, where a homework assignment is to tell a caregiver, “I love you.”
Then there’s the low teacher turnover and the one bored and unarmed security guard who keeps watch over 90 teenagers who are judged to be the most violent in Detroit Public Schools.
Barsamian is one of the few places where high school students expelled for violence, drugs, aggression toward school staff or other serious actions can continue their education. Some were kicked out of other schools in the district; others are serving out expulsions from districts around the state.
The expulsions range from a few months to a year. Most of the kids are on probation in the juvenile justice system. Students leave the school after their expulsion period is over.
Students, staff and parents said Barsamian’s small setting and strict rules have worked well. Some wish the students could stay longer.
In tough times, private schools take innovative approaches to fundraising
Most solicitations don’t begin with the words “don’t give,” but that’s the approach being used this year by the private Oakwood School in a clever, celebrity-packed appeal timed to its annual fundraising drive.
In the 3 1/2-minute video, Danny DeVito, Jason Alexander, Steve Carell and other Hollywood stars voice such sentiments as “The economy is in the toilet, so don’t give” and “You’d be stupid to give” before getting to the real point: “Unless you care about your children and their future,” and “Unless you care about families who had a hard year and need some help with tuition.”
Created by parent volunteers, the video is an example of the inventive methods private schools are using this spring to generate giving at a time when traditional benefactors may be hard-pressed themselves.
Oakwood’s “Don’t Give” campaign was a precursor to its major fundraiser, a star-studded event Saturday at The Lot in West Hollywood, featuring comedy, music and an auction. The video was meant to be an internal communication but was distributed on YouTube, said James Astman, Oakwood’s head of school.
Multiracial Pupils to Be Counted in A New Way
Michael Alison Chandler & Maria Glod:
Public schools in the Washington region and elsewhere are abandoning their check-one-box approach to gathering information about race and ethnicity in an effort to develop a more accurate portrait of classrooms transformed by immigration and interracial marriage. Next year, they will begin a separate count of students who are of more than one race.
For many families in the District, Montgomery and other local counties that have felt forced to deny a part of their children’s heritage, the new way of counting, mandated by the federal government, represents a long-awaited acknowledgment of their identity: Enrollment forms will allow students to identify as both white and American Indian, for example, or black and Asian. But changing labels will make it harder to monitor progress of groups that have trailed in school, including black and Hispanic students.
Ease the Tuition Squeeze
You’ve been waiting for this moment for nearly 18 years: Your baby is almost ready for college. Your finances, not so much. The market’s protracted free fall means that your college fund is now worth just a fraction of what you need. Your home’s value has no doubt dropped sharply too – no help there. The only thing that keeps going up, you guessed it, is college tuition. So it’s goodbye, Dream School U., hello, Central State, right?
Wrong. While there’s no denying times are tough, you have more options to help pay for that BA than you think. From targeting the right schools to taking advantage of new financial aid rules and tax breaks, you can get the price to a manageable level. These steps will ensure your kid ends up at a great school you can really afford.
1. Use your savings strategically
The typical 529 college savings plan of a high school junior or senior has dropped 12.5% in value over the past year. And if you didn’t invest in an age-based portfolio that automatically shifted into safer investments as your child got older, your losses may be far worse. The big question before you: Should you try to hold off withdrawing money from the account to give your savings time to bounce back?
Reading Test Dummies
E.D. Hirsch
In his recent education speech, President Obama asked the states to raise their standards and develop “assessments that don’t simply measure whether students can fill in a bubble on a test.” With the No Child Left Behind law up for reauthorization this year, the onus is now on lawmakers and educators to find a way to maintain accountability while mitigating the current tendency to reduce schooling to a joyless grind of practice exams and empty instruction in “reading strategies.”
Before we throw away bubble tests, though, we should institute a relatively simple change that would lessen the worst effects of the test-prep culture and improve education in the bargain.
These much maligned, fill-in-the-bubble reading tests are technically among the most reliable and valid tests available. The problem is that the reading passages used in these tests are random. They are not aligned with explicit grade-by-grade content standards. Children are asked to read and then answer multiple-choice questions about such topics as taking a hike in the Appalachians even though they’ve never left the sidewalks of New York, nor studied the Appalachians in school.
Teachers can’t prepare for the content of the tests and so they substitute practice exams and countless hours of instruction in comprehension strategies like “finding the main idea.” Yet despite this intensive test preparation, reading scores have paradoxically stagnated or declined in the later grades.
This is because the schools have imagined that reading is merely a “skill” that can be transferred from one passage to another, and that reading scores can be raised by having young students endlessly practice strategies on trivial stories. Tragic amounts of time have been wasted that could have been devoted to enhancing knowledge and vocabulary, which would actually raise reading comprehension scores.
Waunakee teacher creates musicals that star all the fifth-graders
Music teacher Kathy Bartling is on a mission.
“I want every child to have one chance to be on the stage before they leave this school district,” Bartling said.
To that end, she has written and produced 30 different musicals where every fifth-grader has a role, despite the growing student population. The first year she had 70 students to work in. This year, she found a way to include 261 students at Waunakee Intermediate School.
She has found ways for students who don’t speak English to take part.
This year some students performed as a green inch worm. The required costume was one of 17 new ones she made this year.
Service programs gain allure for students
Eric Sandow is poised to graduate with a geography degree in May, but career plans A and B – graduate school or a land-planning job – aren’t panning out.
So the 28-year-old University of Wisconsin-Parkside student is seriously considering a pursuit he’s had in the back of his mind for years: the Peace Corps.
The troubled economy and President Barack Obama’s call to service are helping create a surge of interest in the Peace Corps, AmeriCorps and other service opportunities. Meanwhile, the U.S. House last week approved the largest expansion of government-sponsored service programs in years.
Both Peace Corps and AmeriCorps provide modest compensation, student loan deferment and a small scholarship at the end that members can use to pay off debt or pursue more schooling.
“With the job market being the way it is, and my situation, I could definitely do that for two years, then see what the economy’s like and in the process maybe help some people out,” said Sandow, who has contacted a Peace Corps recruiter and is mulling over an application.
CNA program a boon to Oregon High School students
Kayla Crowley, 18, is healthy, but she’s lying in a financial institution with a thermometer in her mouth.
Two mornings a week, this basement room in the Oregon Community Bank and Trust has served as a bustling training area — not for lending money, but for lending a hand.
Crowley and 10 other students from Oregon High School are earning both high school and college credit while they prepare for a booming job category: nursing assistant. While courses such as this take place across the region, the Oregon class “has been a real community effort,” said Bill Urban, coordinator for Oregon’s School 2 Career program, which matches students with on-the-job training.
The bank donated space. Meriter loaned two hospital beds. Oregon Manor contributed two wheelchairs and a Hoyer patient lift.
Behind the Boom in AP Coursess
It’s about 9 a.m. on a Friday morning and history teacher Howard Wilen is lecturing on President Theodore Roosevelt’s relationship with labor unions.
Roosevelt, Wilen told the class, helped secure better work hours for coal miners but coal prices increased as a result.
Wilen’s Advanced Placement U.S. history students have brokered a deal of sorts too, taking a tough class in high school that could earn college credit. For those who do well on the placement exam, many colleges will give credit for the AP history class, saving students money and time down the road.
Participation in AP courses has skyrocketed in recent years as many school districts have adopted open-enrollment policies, allowing any student willing to take on the work a chance to try the college-level courses.
But at Alamo Heights High School, where Wilen chairs the social studies department, admission remains restricted to top students. The district is rethinking that policy now.
Organizers looking to West High alumni to finance new entrance
West High School students will have a grand new entrance to come through next fall. But to help finance it, organizers are looking down the street and across the country — to alumni.
Later this month, about 20,000 West High graduates will find in their mailboxes a donation plea for “The Ash Street Project,” a $400,000, front yard reconfiguration of a building that many consider a Near West Side landmark. Designed by Madison landscape architect Ken Saiki, a West High alum, the new entry will have a symmetrical, formal staircase, decorative walkway and performance area.
Referendum funds and grants will cover $250,000 to replace the school’s crumbling steps and make the new entry comply with the federal Americans with Disabilities Act. But it’s up to West to raise another $150,000 to fund Saiki’s design, a vision approved by a community committee, said Principal Ed Holmes.
“Technically the district money is enough to take down what we have and put it back the way it is,” Holmes said. “It’s time for a renovation, kind of a starting over. The Ash Street entrance is really the symbol and the image of West High School that people have had over the generations.”
Can AFT president Randi Weingarten satisfy teachers and reformers at the same time?
Andrew Rotherham & Richard Whitmire:
Randi Weingarten, the notoriously feisty president of the second-largest national teachers’ union, the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), received a hero’s welcome at the National Press Club last November. In her speech, she vowed to give ear to almost any tough-minded school reform, and, in a line that thrilled many reformers, promised that the AFT will not protect incompetent teachers: “Teachers are the first to say, ‘Let’s get incompetent teachers out of the classroom.'”
Weingarten would seem to be donning the reformist mantle of a previous AFT president, Al Shanker, a highly regarded reformer who shook up pro-union liberals by reminding everyone that tough school discipline and achievement standards were civil rights fundamentals. But an approach that worked during Shanker’s tenure is more difficult now, with the reformers and unionists pitched in a bare-knuckled fight that is not about lofty, system-changing goals as much as about the thorny specifics of state and local education policy. Caught up in a contentious situation with the Washington, D.C. school system that has challenged her reformist credentials, Weingarten’s attempt to satisfy both sides of the debate is being put to the test–the result of which could dictate the future of education reform across the country.
Core Knowledge Foundation Blog, Take That, AIG!
Published by Robert Pondiscio on March 20, 2009 in Education News and Students:
An upstate New York high school student could teach a course in character to the bonus babies of AIG. Nicole Heise of Ithaca High School was one of The Concord Review’s six winners of The Concord Review’s Emerson Prize awards for excellence this year. But as EdWeek’s Kathleen Kennedy Manzo tells the story, she sent back her prize, a check for $800, with this note:
“As you well know, for high school-aged scholars, a forum of this caliber and the incentives it creates for academic excellence are rare. I also know that keeping The Concord Review active requires resources. So, please allow me to put my Emerson award money to the best possible use I can imagine by donating it to The Concord Review so that another young scholar can experience the thrill of seeing his or her work published.”
The Concord Review publishes research papers by high school scholars. It’s a one-of-a-kind venue for its impressive young authors. Manzo notes TCR “has won praise from renowned historians, lawmakers, and educators, yet has failed to ever draw sufficient funding…It operates on a shoestring, as Founder and Publisher Will Fitzhugh reminds me often. Fitzhugh, who has struggled for years to keep the operation afloat, challenges students to do rigorous scholarly work and to delve deeply into history. His success at inspiring great academic work is juxtaposed against his failure to get anyone with money to take notice.”
Young Ms. Heise noticed. Anyone else?
“Teach by Example”
Will Fitzhugh [founder]
Consortium for Varsity Academics® [2007]
The Concord Review [1987]
Ralph Waldo Emerson Prizes [1995]
National Writing Board [1998]
TCR Institute [2002]
730 Boston Post Road, Suite 24
Sudbury, Massachusetts 01776 USA
978-443-0022; 800-331-5007
www.tcr.org; fitzhugh@tcr.org
Varsity Academics®
Why Don’t Students Like School?
Daniel Willingham, via a kind reader’s email:
trange as it may sound, the mind is not designed for thinking–it’s designed to save us from having to think. Because thinking is slow, effortful, and uncertain, we rely on memory, not thought, to guide us whenever possible. Nonetheless, we are curious and we do like to think, so long as the issue or problem at hand is neither too easy nor too hard.
Wisconsin State Budget Forum, Wed. April 1, Wright Middle School, 6 p.m.
Joe Quick:
Dear MMSD Advocate,
Every two years, state government adopts a biennial budget that funds nearly every program in state government. Gov. Jim Doyle’s budget mostly protects K-12, but many K-12 programs were cut by 1%. Due to the floundering national/state economy millions of dollars in federal stimulus funds for Wisconsin are being used to provide a one-time boost to state funding for schools over the next two years.
Short-term, there are some important items in the budget that will help MMSD; but long-term, little is being done to end the annual ritual of either going to referendum or determining what programs and services for students must be cut to balance the local budget.
In the two-year legislative cycle, April in odd years is probably the most important time to contact your legislator to advocate for school programs. Whether it’s SAGE, the K-3 class size reduction program funded by the state, or funding for students in special education — the biennial budget provides the resources.
If you want to advocate to protect school programs/services, please come to the State Budget Forum on April 1st (see attached flier [54K PDF]) to learn about the issues, receive information to help you with that advocacy and find out what is being done to bring about comprehensive school funding reform.
Please forward this information to others who might be interested. Hope to see you April 1st,
Joe Quick
Legislative Liaison/Communication Specialist
Madison Schools
608 663-1902
Andrekopoulos likes the idea of “year-round” classes for Milwaukee Public Schools
Although Milwaukee Public Schools Superintendent William Andrekopoulos is talking up the idea of converting almost the entire public school system to a year-round schedule, a new study of MPS schools finds mixed evidence, at best, that it increases academic success.
The study, conducted by Bradley R. Carl, a University of Wisconsin-Madison researcher, finds little difference in the annual improvement between students on year-round schedules and those on the traditional September to June calendar. The study, completed in February, can be found on the MPS Web site.
Andrekopoulos enters the week still promoting the year-round idea, although it got a tepid reception last week and, in addition to Carl’s research, there is no agreement among researchers nationally that the revamped schedule improves results.
The superintendent pointed to evidence in the Carl study that students who remained in the same school for two years made bigger gains under the year-round schedule, in which they get shorter summer vacation and longer breaks during the rest of the year.
He said the results showed the importance of reducing the very high percentage of MPS students who change schools frequently – more than 30% are in a different school each September than they were in the year before, not including those who get promoted. A year-round schedule across the city would reduce mobility, Andrekopoulos suggested.
Madison School District Candidate Forum 4/4/2009
via Laurel Cavalluzzo:
WHAT: Board of Education Candidate Forum
with Arlene Silveira Lucy Mathiak Donald Gors
WHEN: April 4, 2009 10-noon
WHERE: Lakeview Public Library
2845 N Sherman Ave. [Map]
Madison, WI 53704 (608) 246-4547
Open to the public
Learn more about candidate’s positions on issues important to our schools and our communities.
SPONSERED BY:
Lakewood Gardens Neighborhood Committee
WI Charter School Assn
Nuestro Mundo, Inc.
Education’s Ground Zero: Michelle Rhee in Washington, DC
The most unlikely figure in the struggle to reform America’s education system right now is Michelle Rhee.
She’s a Korean-American chancellor of schools in a city that is mostly African-American. She’s an insurgent from the school-reform movement who spent her career on the outside of the system, her nose pressed against the glass — and now she’s in charge of some of America’s most blighted schools. Less than two years into the job, she has transformed Washington into ground zero of America’s education reform movement.
Ms. Rhee, 39, who became Washington’s sixth school superintendent in 10 years, has ousted one-third of the district’s principals, shaken up the system, created untold enemies, improved test scores, and — more than almost anyone else — dared to talk openly about the need to replace ineffective teachers.
“It’s sort of a taboo topic that nobody wants to talk about,” she acknowledged in an interview in her office, not far from the Capitol. “I used to say ‘fire people.’ And they said you can’t say that. Say, ‘separate them from the district’ or something like that.”
RE: ’07 U.S. Births Break Baby Boom Record
Douglas M. Newman:
It’s irresponsible that Erick Ekholm doesn’t mention well publicized research citing teen pregnancy being tied to racy TV in his article (‘07 U.S. Births Break Baby Boom Record, Mar. 18, 2009).
In the widely published Nov. 3, 2008 Associate Press news release by Lindsy Tanner, Rand Corp. published a study in the November 2008 issue of Pediatrics, linking TV viewing habits and teen pregnancy.
Paraphrasing the AP’s press release and Anita Chandra, lead author of Rand’s study, “teens who watched the raciest shows were twice as likely to become pregnant as those who didn’t. Previous research found that watching lots of sex on TV can influence teens to have sex at earlier ages. Shows highlighting only the positive aspects of sexual behavior without the risks can lead teens to have unprotected sex.”
Perhaps 2007 birth rates just might have been influenced by racy television shows teens are viewing – with parental consent and produced by adults in the name of corporate profits I might add.
Douglas M. Newman
Guilford, Connecticut
Cell: (203) 516-1006
Word count: 148 (after the hyphen in the last sentence, the word count is 166).
Groundbreaking research suggests that pregnancy rates are much higher among teens who watch a lot of TV with sexual dialogue and behavior, compared with those who have tamer viewing tastes.
“Sex in the City,” anyone? That was one of the shows used in the research.
The new study is the first to link those viewing habits with teen pregnancy, said lead author Anita Chandra, a Rand Corp. behavioral scientist. Teens who watched the raciest shows were twice as likely to become pregnant over the next three years as those who watched few such programs.
Previous research by some of the same scientists had already found that watching lots of sex on TV can influence teens to have sex at earlier ages.
Shows that only highlight the positive aspects of sexual behavior without the risks can lead teens to have unprotected sex “before they’re ready to make responsible and informed decisions,” Miss Chandra said.
The more sexual content in television and magazines that teens are exposed to, the more likely they are to have sexual intercourse at an early age, a new study says.
The University of North Carolina study, published in today’s issue of the journal Pediatrics, concludes that white adolescents who view more sexual content than their peers are 2.2 times more likely to have sexual intercourse by the time they are 14 to 16 years old.
“Some, especially those who have fewer alternative sources of sexual norms, such as parents or friends, may use the media as a kind of sexual superpeer that encourages them to be sexually active,” the study authors state.
And, as similar past studies have noted, “one of the strongest protective factors against early sexual behavior was clear parental communication about sex.”
St. Maria Goretti Student Faces Weapons Charge
A 14-year-old Madison teen faces weapons charges after he allegedly brought a pellet gun to St. Maria Goretti School on Thursday morning.
The student was tentatively charged with possession of a dangerous weapon by a person under the age of 18 and also was tentatively charged with burglary after admitting committing other crimes, including a residential burglary from 2007, police said. Madison police said a school staff member found a black, plastic pellet gun in the student’s backpack.
The student “claimed he did not mean to bring the weapon to school and had forgotten it was in his backpack,” said police spokesman Joel DeSpain. “But the investigating officer was also told the suspect might have threatened to shoot another student.”
St. Maria Goretti is a K-8 parochial school at 5405 Flad Ave. on the city’s West Side.
A Chat with Arlene Silveira
Click above to watch, or CTRL-click to download this mpeg4 or mp3 audio file. You’ll need Quicktime to view the video file.
Madison School Board President Arlene Silveira is up for re-election on April 7, 2009. Arlene graciously agreed to record this video conversation recently. We discussed her sense of where the Madison School District is in terms of:
- academics
- finance
- community support/interaction
- Leadership (Board and Administration)
We also discussed what she hopes to accomplish over the next three years.
Arlene’s opponent on April 7, 2009 is Donald Gors. The Wisconsin State Journal recently posted a few notes on each candidate here.
I emailed Arlene, Donald Gors and Lucy Mathiak (who is running unopposed) regarding this video conversation. I hope to meet Lucy at some point over the next few weeks. I have not heard from Donald Gors.
Arlene and Lucy were first elected in April, 2006. There are many links along with video interviews of both here.
2009 Wisconsin DPI Superintendent Candidate Debate Tony Evers and Rose Fernandez
Via Wisconsin Public Television. CTRL Click here to download the 382MB 60 minute event video, or this 26MB mp3 audio file.
Candidate websites: Tony Evers & Rose Fernandez
Amy Hetzner:
Rose Fernandez regularly refers to herself as an outsider in the race to become the state’s next schools chief.
The implication is that her April 7 opponent, Deputy Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Evers, is an insider who is unlikely to change what is happening with education in the state.
The outsider candidate who can change things and shake up the status quo has long been a popular thrust in political campaigns. President Barack Obama, although a U.S. senator at the time, used aspects of the tactic in his campaign last fall.
But some wonder whether it will have the same impact in what is likely to be a low-turnout election April 7.
“The advantage to the insider is being able to draw off of established, organizational support,” said Charles Franklin, a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “The outsider’s goal is to try to become visible enough that people unhappy with the status quo can voice their outsider outrage.”
From her Web site address – www.changedpi.com – to frequently tying her opponent to the state’s largest teachers union, the Wisconsin Education Association Council, Fernandez appears to be trying to capitalize on one of her many differences with her opponent.
“There are perils with entrenchment,” said Fernandez, a former pediatric trauma nurse and past president of the Wisconsin Coalition for Virtual School Families. “With that there comes an inability to see the problems as they really are.”
But being an outsider also has some disadvantages, which Evers is trying to play up as well.
At a recent appearance before the Public Policy Forum, Evers puzzled about Fernandez’s stance against a provision in Gov. Jim Doyle’s bill that he said was supported by voucher school proponents while she expressed support for voucher schools.
Change Pay, Change Teaching?
Taylor Betz will make a lot more as a high school math teacher this year than her normal salary might suggest.
There’s the $2,300 bonus she gets for working at a “hard-to-serve school,” the $2,300 for filling a “hard-to-staff position,” the $2,300 that all teachers at her school are likely to get for raising student scores on state tests, the $2,300 “beating the odds” bonus she gets for significantly raising the math scores of her own students, and a few smaller bonuses.
Given the extra money, it’s easy to see why a teacher like Ms. Betz would be an enthusiastic supporter of the “pay for performance” system that Denver has adopted. But even though such systems are proliferating, they’re still both highly controversial and little understood.
Performance pay is one of several areas getting attention right now as education reformers zero in on high-quality teaching as the key to helping students learn. The thinking goes like this: It takes good teachers to improve student achievement, and it will take better pay to lure and keep good teachers.
Not only that, advocates of these plans say, but pay should be more directly linked to how well teachers do. And one way to make that link is by looking at students’ scores on standardized tests.
Reports surface that teens are taking cow drugs for abortions
Veterinary and medical professionals in Wisconsin said Friday that they have been warned about a potentially alarming practice among the state’s rural youth: teenage girls ingesting livestock drugs to cheaply and discreetly end their unwanted pregnancies.
So far, the professionals in animal and human health and the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction are treating the reports of girls inducing their own abortions with prostaglandins – drugs commonly used by cow breeders to regulate animals’ heat cycles – as rumors, because no cases have been officially confirmed by the Wisconsin Department of Health Services.
But Anna Anderson, the executive director of Care Net Pregnancy Center of Green County in Monroe, maintains that she has identified at least 10 girls ages 14 to 18 in a three-county area who admitted to taking some form of cow abortifacient in the past year.
Anderson said the girls told her they took it because they found it to be a cheap and easy way to end their pregnancies without their parents finding out.
At the American Veterinary Medical Association, Assistant Director Kimberly May said Friday that her organization first heard the rumor about the teenagers in mid-February from the Wisconsin Veterinary Medical Association. Since then, the American Animal Hospital Association has also posted an advisory about the issue on its Web site.
Injected properly in livestock, prostaglandins shorten a heat cycle so a female animal can be bred again, May said.
Some Rich Districts Get Richer as Aid Is Rushed to Schools
Dale Lamborn, the superintendent of a somewhat threadbare rural school district, feels the pain of Utah’s economic crisis every day as he tinkers with his shrinking budget, struggling to avoid laying off teachers or cutting classes like welding or calculus.
Just across the border in Wyoming, a state awash in oil and gas money, James Bailey runs a wealthier district. It has a new elementary school and gives every child an Apple laptop.
But under the Obama administration’s education stimulus package, Mr. Lamborn, who needs every penny he can get, will receive hundreds of dollars less per student than will Dr. Bailey, who says he does not need the extra money.
“For us, this is just a windfall,” Dr. Bailey said.
In pouring rivers of cash into states and school districts, Washington is using a tangle of well-worn federal formulas, some of which benefit states that spend more per pupil, while others help states with large concentrations of poor students or simply channel money based on population. Combined, the formulas seem to take little account of who needs the money most.
As a result, some districts that are well off will find themselves swimming in cash, while some that are struggling may get too little to avoid cutbacks.
Teachers Alleging Attacks by Youths Find Themselves Scrutinized
Woodson Academy teacher William Pow had just finished writing on the blackboard one January afternoon, he said, when he turned to face his algebra class and saw the textbook “Mathematics in Life” hurtling toward his head.
He ducked, he said, but it caught him in the neck and shoulder. His colleagues at Woodson have not been as lucky. English teacher Randy Brown said he was hit just above the left ear by a book thrown by a student last month. He was treated for a concussion and said he has since suffered from headaches and nausea.
“They think it’s a game to hit people in the head,” said Brown, who, like Pow, has not returned to school.
They say the 260-student ninth-grade academy, housed at Ronald H. Brown Middle School in Northeast Washington while a new Woodson High is under construction, is overcrowded and dangerous. Brown and Pow count five other teachers or administrators who they said have been attacked this academic year, including one who was pelted by textbooks and another pinned to a desktop and choked. Other teachers, Brown and Pow said, are routinely subjected to verbal threats of violence.
Price Drop: Stocks, Homes, Now Triple-Word Scores
A trio of words — one that’s slang for pizza, another defined as a body’s vital life force and a third referring to a snoring sound — have conspired to change the game of Scrabble.
“Za,” “qi” and “zzz” were added recently to the game’s official word list for its original English-language edition. Because Z’s and Q’s each have the game’s highest point value of 10, those monosyllabic words can rack up big scores for relatively little effort. So now that those high-scoring letters are more versatile, some Scrabble aficionados would like to see the rules changed — which would be the only change since Alfred Butts popularized the game in 1948.
For non Scrabble-rousers, there are analogs for the proposed re-evaluations in other leisure pursuits. Some notable mispriced assets: Vermont Avenue in Monopoly, three-point field goals in basketball and football and overtime losses in hockey. Yet traditionalists say rules should endure; it’s up to players to exploit them.
In Scrabble, players form words on a 15-by-15-space board using 100 tiles — two of them blanks that can stand in for any letter, and 98 tiles with letters and corresponding point values. Players draw seven tiles to start the game and refresh their set after each turn.
A Summary of the Wisconsin DPI Superintendent Candidate Event
WisPolitics: Evers, Fernandez question each other in We The People debate
3/20/2009
By Greg Bump
WisPolitics
Tony Evers questioned opponent Rose Fernandez’s qualifications for the state’s top education spot Friday night, while Fernandez countered by trying to portray him as a crony of Wisconsin’s largest teacher’s union.
The two, vying for the post of superintendent of Public Instruction, laid out competing visions in a We The People debate.
Evers, the deputy superintendent at DPI, touted his 34 years of experience in education while contrasting his resume with the credentials of Fernandez, who is a nurse by trade and has never worked in a public school.
Fernandez, a virtual school advocate, countered by continually trying to lay problems with the state’s educational system at the feet of Evers, who has held the No. 2 post at the agency for eight years.
Given the opportunity to question each other, Evers pointed out Fernandez represented virtual schools and has zero experience in the administration of public schools. He asked how parents with children in public schools can trust her to invest in their education rather than funneling money toward special interests.
“My own special interest is the boys and girls growing up in the state of Wisconsin,” Fernandez shot back.
Fernandez then stressed Evers’ endorsement by the Wisconsin Education Association Council and the “hundreds of thousands of dollars” the union has spent to support his campaign. She asked him to list three reforms he has supported that WEAC opposed.
Evers answered that the union was unhappy with a settlement DPI reached on allowing virtual schools — in which districts allow students to take courses on-line — to continue. He also said he has been a strong advocate of charter schools — which operate without some of the regulations of other public schools — something the union has opposed.
“I started charter schools. I know what charter schools are about,” Evers said. “I don’t need a lecture about charter schools.”
Evers also stressed his support from school boards, child advocates, parents and others.
“That’s why you have to have a broad coalition,” Evers said. “This isn’t about this overwhelming group of people driving policy at the state level. That just isn’t fact.”
Fernandez ripped DPI for not doing enough to help the struggling Milwaukee Public School system address issues like dropout rates and the achievement gap for minority students.
Evers countered that he has worked on the issue with educators in Milwaukee, but there are also socioeconomic factors that are hampering achievement.
“Laying this issue on my lap is irrational,” Evers said.
Fernandez also brought up a piece of Evers’ campaign lit that referred to voucher schools in Milwaukee as “a privatization scheme.”
“Some of the schools have been scheming, and those schools we have drummed out of the program,” Evers replied.
Evers warned that Fernandez would run DPI through the prism of the “special interest” of choice schools.
Both candidates agreed that a merit pay system for educators could have benefit, but they disagreed on the details. Fernandez indicated that she would base her merit pay system more on classroom outcomes, while Evers stressed that rewards for training were equally important.
They differed more prominently on the qualified economic offer, which Gov. Jim Doyle has proposed eliminating in his 2009-11 budget plan. Fernandez wants to retain it, saying that without the control on teacher compensation, property taxes could rise sharply.
“Children may become the enemy of the taxpayer,” she said.
Evers said he has bargained on both sides of the table, and he opposes the QEO because it hurts the state’s ability to stay competitive in teacher pay.
Evers embraced the coming federal stimulus cash, which will pump $800 million into state schools as “a historic event” that acknowledges “educators are the lever that can turn our economy around.” He said he would appoint a trustee to oversee the allocation of the funds in Milwaukee schools to ensure the money is getting to the classrooms.
In contrast, Fernandez said she looked upon the federal stimulus with caution in that it is one-time funding that won’t be there in the future
And while Evers touted the state’s ACT and SAT scores as being among the highest in the nation, Fernandez said those tests are only administered to college-bound students and aren’t indicative of the academic struggles in districts like Milwaukee.
We the People/Wisconsin is a multi-media that includes the Wisconsin State Journal, Wisconsin Public Television, Wisconsin Public Radio, WISC-TV, WisPolitics.com and Wood Communications Group.
Wisconsin DPI Superintendent Candidate Tony Evers Advocates Charter Schools
Tony Evers campaign, via email:
Tony Evers today pledged to continue his long commitment to Wisconsin’s charter schools, which provide innovative educational strategies. Dr. Evers has played a major educational leadership role in making Wisconsin 6th in the nation, out of all 50 states, in both the number of charter schools and the number of students enrolled in charter schools.
“We are a national leader in charter schools and I will continue my work for strong charter schools in Wisconsin,” Evers said. “As State Superintendent, I will continue to promote our charter schools and the innovative, successful learning strategies they pursue as we work to increase achievement for all students no matter where they live.”
Evers, as Deputy State Superintendent, has been directly responsible for overseeing two successful competitive federal charter school grants that brought over $90 million to Wisconsin. From these successful applications, Evers has recommended the approval of over 700 separate planning, implementation, implementation renewal, and dissemination grants to charter schools around the state since 2001.
During the past eight years, the number of charter schools in Wisconsin has risen from 92 to 221 – an increase of almost 150%. The number of students enrolled in charter schools has increased from 12,000 students in 2001 to nearly 36,000 today.
Evers has also represented the Department of Public Instruction on State Superintendent Elizabeth Burmaster’s Charter School Advisory Council. The council was created to provide charter school representatives, parents, and others with the opportunity to discuss issues of mutual interest and provide recommendations to the State Superintendent.
Boosting Schools Without Spending a Dime — Your Ideas
My suggestions last month [Metro Monday column, Feb. 16] for raising achievement in budget-cutting times inspired an outpouring of reader ideas. Some were interesting, such as tougher honor rolls, more reading clubs and more speaking practice. Some were wild, such as my favorite, eliminating school buses.
A lot of people yearned, as I did, for simpler approaches that drew parents into schooling, thus strengthening family ties and improving education while saving money. Most of us admitted that few, if any, of our suggestions will be adopted, but keep in mind that hardly anyone believed the Boston Red Sox would ever win the World Series again.
I had seven ideas: replace elementary school homework with free reading; eliminate barriers to charter school growth; have teachers call parents to praise their kids; have parents e-mail educators to laud their teaching; require high school students to read at least one nonfiction book; call on every child in every class; and declare a national holiday on which everyone reads. As I expected, my charter school notion was unpopular, but President Obama has since made it a top priority anyway. Good luck with that, Mr. President. All the rest won reader support, particularly the first idea on homework. I will get to that after we review the most intriguing of your suggestions.
Wisconsin’s Budget Picture
We’ve made the case numerous times on this blog that Governor Doyle’s proposed budget uses too much one-time money to balance the state budget. Just yesterday, the Legislative Fiscal Bureau estimated the structural deficit for 2011-13 at $1.5 billion – and keep in mind, that’s with $3 billion in new ongoing taxes added to the rolls.
It seems that some local government officials are starting to pick up on the house of cards Doyle has built. In Madison ( of all places), a school board member has written a criticism of Doyle’s use of one-time money, understanding the peril which awaits school budgets in the future:
Study: Charter school students may be more likely to graduate, go to college
Charter schools generally cannot take credit for boosting test scores, but there is intriguing evidence that students at charter high schools may be more likely to graduate and attend college, a national study concludes.
The Rand Corp. study, which was released Wednesday, examined charters in eight states. Rand, a nonprofit research organization in Santa Monica, Calif., also examined charters in Chicago, San Diego, Denver, Milwaukee, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Texas and Florida.
A year ago, a Rand report on charter schools in Philadelphia found that their students performed about the same as students in district-run schools.
Charter school research has become politically charged, with dueling views. Some reports have concluded that students at the nation’s 4,100 charter schools outperform their counterparts in traditional public schools. Other investigators have said charter students do no better than public school students and often do worse.
Researchers involved with the Rand report said they had used performance data of individual students over time to try to evaluate charter schools more accurately. Their work received financial support from several nonprofit foundations, including the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the William Penn Foundation. Bill Gates supports charter schools, and the Gates Foundation has provided millions of dollars to help successful ones expand.
Ron Zimmer, Brian Gill, Kevin Booker, Stephane Lavertu, Tim R. Sass, John Witte:
The first U.S. charter school opened in 1992, and the scale of the charter movement has since grown to 4,000 schools and more than a million students in 40 states plus the District of Columbia. With this growth has also come a contentious debate about the effects of the schools on their own students and on students in nearby traditional public schools (TPSs). In recent years, research has begun to inform this debate, but many of the key outcomes have not been adequately examined, or have been examined in only a few states. Do the conflicting conclusions of different studies reflect real differences in effects driven by variation in charter laws and policies? Or do they reflect differences in research approaches — some of which may be biased? This book examines four primary research questions: (1) What are the characteristics of students transferring to charter schools? (2) What effect do charter schools have on test-score gains for students who transfer between TPSs and charter schools? (3) What is the effect of attending a charter high school on the probability of graduating and of entering college? (4) What effect does the introduction of charter schools have on test scores of students in nearby TPSs?
Teen Births on the Rise for Second Year in a Row
The rate at which teenage girls in the United States are having babies has risen for a second year in a row, government statistics show, putting one of the nation’s most successful social and public health campaigns in jeopardy.
The birth rate among 15- to 19-year-olds rose 1.4 percent from 2006 to 2007, continuing a rise that began a year earlier when the rate jumped 3.4 percent, reversing what had been a 14-year decline. Although researchers will have to wait at least another year to see whether a clear trend emerges, the two consecutive increases signal that the long national campaign to reduce teen pregnancies might have stalled or possibly even reversed.
“We may have reached a tipping point,” said Stephanie J. Ventura of the National Center for Health Statistics, which issued the report today. “It’s hard to know where it’s going to go from here.”
Other experts said the two-year data probably represent a trend and fit with other research showing a stall in the long drop in sexual activity among teens, as well as a decrease in condom use.
Just Say No….to Smarties? Faux Smoking Has Parents Fuming
Summit Middle School in Frisco, Colo., is a tobacco-free campus. Students who smoke cigarettes are suspended.
But when a lunchtime crew of sixth-graders last fall started “smoking” Smarties, the tart, chalky candy discs wrapped in cellophane, lunchroom monitors and the school nurse were flummoxed.
The children didn’t light the candy. They crushed it into a fine powder in its wrapper, tore off one end, poured the powder into their mouths and blew out fine Smarties dust, mimicking a smoker’s exhale.
“It was freaky,” says Corinne McGrew, a nurse for Summit School District. “My biggest concern was that they would aspirate the wrapper or a whole Smarties and it would be a choking hazard.”
The fad at Summit Middle School died down after a few days and some harsh words from the lunchroom staff. But at other schools and across the Internet, “smoking Smarties,” as the activity has been labeled, is gaining popularity. Some children have even taken to snorting it, all to the horror of parents, teachers and the 60-year-old company that manufactures the candy.
To improve education, improve teacher training
Last week, President Barack Obama challenged parents, school leaders and teacher unions to raise their expectations for our children’s educational achievement, warning that we cannot maintain our global economic competitiveness otherwise. So Obama has increased the federal government’s financial commitment to education and strongly recommended both an increase in the number of charter schools and merit pay for teachers whose students show progress.
But these two initiatives are stopgaps. The real need is to improve the quality of all our teachers. And that goal starts with the colleges of education that prepare new teachers to enter the classroom.
What we need most is a total revamping of teacher-preparation programs. Until this occurs, we’ll continue to have second-rate schools no matter how much money we spend.
And now is the time to act. In addition to a president who’s identified education as a top priority, we have Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, who led one of our country’s largest school districts and has a reputation for getting things done; teacher unions that support higher standards for new teachers; and, perhaps most importantly, a $5 billion pot of stimulus funds at Duncan’s disposal for educational improvement initiatives.
57 apply to operate new Milwaukee voucher schools
In each recent year, the number of people saying they are opening voucher schools was similar to this year’s total and the number who made it into operation was in the single digits. The schools have substantial hurdles to clear, including getting a building that meets codes and signing up students and teachers.
In addition to the 57 new applicants, just about all of the current roster of voucher schools – around 120, including a few that do not appear to be operating at the moment – have applied to remain in the program next year.
Rising ranks of students
Put it all together and DPI is forecasting the number of low-income students using the state voucher program next year will be equal to about 20,500 full-time students, up from about 19,500 this year, an increase that is line with the pattern of recent years. (The actual number of students is higher than the “full time equivalent” figure because four-year-old kindergartners are funded at a fraction of other students. The actual number in September was 20,244.)
Dallas ISD records show school held ‘cage fights’
Emily Ramshaw and Tawnell Hobbs:
The principal and other staff members at South Oak Cliff High School were supposed to be breaking up fights. Instead, they sent troubled students into a steel utility cage in an athletic locker room to battle it out with bare fists and no head protection, records show.
Documents obtained by The Dallas Morning News say the “cage fights” took place between 2003 and 2005. The records don’t say how many fights may have taken place.
Donald Moten, who was principal at South Oak Cliff High at the time, denied any wrongdoing when contacted Wednesday.
District investigators learned of the fights as part of an investigation into grade-changing for student athletes that ultimately cost the school its 2006 boys state basketball championship.
Internal district reports obtained by The News describe a culture of sanctioned violence in which school employees and even the principal relied on “the cage” to settle disputes and bring unruly students under control.
Advocating Rose Fernandez for Wisconsin DPI Superintendent
Wisconsin State Journal Editorial:
Wisconsin voters have a clear choice in the April 7 race for state superintendent of the Department of Public Instruction.
The race features a consummate and careful insider, Tony Evers, versus a spirited and straightforward outsider, Rose Fernandez.
The State Journal endorses Fernandez.
The pediatric nurse and mother of five will be a strong advocate for change — someone who will use the mostly symbolic post of state schools superintendent as a bully pulpit to press for reforms, many of which President Barack Obama favors.
With so many high school students failing to graduate in Milwaukee, with so much at stake for Wisconsin in the changing, knowledge-based economy, Fernandez is the best candidate to invigorate DPI.
Fernandez, of Mukwonogo, drew public attention last year for her advocacy of public online charter schools. She helped push for a bipartisan legislative compromise that allowed virtual schools to continue serving thousands of students online with more accountability.
Madison Schools to Deny Open Enrollment Applications Based on Income?
Seth Jovaag, via a kind reader’s email:
In February 2008, the Madison school board – facing mounting legal pressure – overturned a policy that allowed the district to deny transfer requests based on race. Before that, white students were routinely told they couldn’t transfer. Madison was the only district in the state with such a policy, which aimed to limit racial inequalities throughout the district, said district spokesman Ken Syke.
With that policy gone, Madison saw a nearly 50 percent increase in students asking to transfer, from 435 to 643.
Madison superintendent Daniel Nerad notes that Madison’s numbers had been steadily increasing for years. But he acknowledged that the policy change likely explains some of this year’s jump.
“I think we do see some effect of that, but I’m not suggesting all of it comes from that, because frankly we don’t know,” he said.
Still, Nerad has clearly taken notice. Given the new numbers, he plans to ask state lawmakers to allow Madison to deny future requests based on family income levels, rather than race, to prevent disparities from further growing between Madison and its suburbs.
Other districts that border Madison – including Monona Grove, Middleton and McFarland – are seeing more transfer requests from Madison this year, too.
“The change Madison made … that certainly increased the application numbers,” said McFarland’s business director, Jeff Mahoney.
In addition, Verona school board member Dennis Beres said he suspects many Madison parents are trying to transfer their kids from the chronically overcrowded Aldo Leopold elementary school, which is just two miles northeast of Stoner Prairie Elementary in Fitchburg.
Fascinating. I would hope that the Madison School District would pursue students with high academic standards rather than simply try, via legislative influence and lobbying, to prevent them from leaving…. The effects of that initiative may not be positive for the City of Madison’s tax base.
Related: 2009/2010 Madison Open Enrollment applications. Much more on open enrollment here.
Students See Value in History-Writing Venue
Education Week “Curriculum Matters”
Kathleen Kennedy Manzo 17 March 2009:
It is difficult to figure why some education ventures attract impressive financial and political support, while others flounder despite their value to the field. For years, I’ve written about The Concord Review and the really amazing history research papers it publishes from high school authors/scholars.
The Review has won praise from renowned historians, lawmakers, and educators, yet has failed to ever draw sufficient funding. The range of topics is as impressive as the volume of work by high school students: In 77 issues, the 846 published papers have covered topics from Joan of Arc to women’s suffrage, from surgery during the Civil War to the history of laser technology. (The papers average more than 7,000 words, and all have been vetted for accuracy and quality. Many of the students do these research papers for the experience and knowledge they gain, not for school credit.)
But here’s the kicker: It operates on a shoestring, as Founder and Publisher Will Fitzhugh reminds me often. Fitzhugh, who has struggled for years to keep the operation afloat, challenges students to do rigorous scholarly work and to delve deeply into history. His success at inspiring great academic work is juxtaposed against his failure to get anyone with money to take notice.
Well, if the grown-ups in the world have failed to recognize and reward the Review for its 22 years of contributions, the students themselves have not.
Fitzhugh has shared many of the letters he receives from students whose work has been published in The Concord Review over the years. Yesterday, he shared with me one of the most memorable of those letters, which arrived recently at his Sudbury, Massachusetts, office.
Nicole Heise won one of the Review’s Emerson Prize awards for excellence this year. The senior at Ithaca High School in Upstate New York sent the check back, with this note:
“As you well know, for high school-aged scholars, a forum of this caliber and the incentives it creates for academic excellence are rare. I also know that keeping The Concord Review active requires resources. So, please allow me to put my Emerson award money to the best possible use I can imagine by donating it to The Concord Review so that another young scholar can experience the thrill of seeing his or her work published.”
Continue reading Students See Value in History-Writing Venue
‘Relentless Pursuit’: A Year Teaching America
Donna Foote followed four elite college graduates in the Teach For America program. They were assigned to one of the worst schools in one of the toughest neighborhoods of Los Angeles, and Relentless Pursuit is their story.
TFA recruits are a remarkable group, and the program is an incredibly popular destination for new college grads. In 2008, roughly 10% of Georgetown, Harvard and Yale’s graduating seniors applied.
Thanks to Rick Kiley for the link.
D.C. Schools Chief Turns To Rookie Teacher Corps
Michele Rhee, the District of Columbia’s public schools chancellor, has done a lot to shake up schools in the nation’s capital.
But for some, change can’t come soon enough.
So Rhee is intent on attracting young teachers who aren’t vested in the old contractual arrangements with the teachers’ union, which Rhee thinks is getting in the way of her reform efforts.
In other words, Rhee is looking for a “new breed” of teachers, mostly 20-somethings fresh out of college, who may not have majored in education but are drawn to teaching; like 22-year-old Meredith Leonard, a sixth-grade English teacher at Shaw-Garnet-Patterson Middle School.
Like many first-year teachers who’ve poured into Washington, D.C., in the past few years, Leonard is receptive to the changes that Rhee is proposing, such as merit pay and doing away with tenure.
American Adults Flunk Basic Science
Are Americans flunking science? A new national survey commissioned by the California Academy of Sciences and conducted by Harris Interactive® reveals that the U.S. public is unable to pass even a basic scientific literacy test.
Over the past few months, the American government has allocated hundreds of billions of dollars for economic bailout plans. While this spending may provide a short-term solution to the country’s economic woes, most analysts agree that the long-term solution must include a transition to a more knowledge-based economy, including a focus on science, which is now widely recognized as a major driver of innovation and industry.
Despite its importance to economic growth, environmental protection, and global health and energy issues, scientific literacy is currently low among American adults. According to the national survey commissioned by the California Academy of Sciences:
Only 53% of adults know how long it takes for the Earth to revolve around the Sun.
New online dictionary redefines ‘look it up’
Erin McKean doesn’t look much like a revolutionary. She speaks softly. She sews her own skirts and writes a daily blog entry about vintage patterns. She does work out of a basement, but it’s got carpeting and good lighting and roughly 1,500 books, many of whose titles involve the word “words.” Her suburban Chicago home is not exactly the picture of subversion.
This week, though, she is slated to launch what may be the biggest revolution in the printed word since, well, printed words.
Ms. McKean’s brainchild is called Wordnik, and it combines the best practices of the old-fashioned desk reference with Internet innovations. Words can be tagged like a blog entry, their pronunciation recorded and replayed like streaming radio, their related words cataloged like a list of books customers also bought at an online book depot. When the paper page gives way to the Web page, everything about the way we think of words will change, McKean says. “This project,” she predicts in a quiet voice devoid of bravado, “is going to completely revolutionize all of dictionarymaking forever.”
Granted, a dictionary is closer to a database than a mystery thriller, its authors nothing like, say, John Grisham. But to McKean, nothing has ever seemed more fascinating than collecting and organizing American words.
Madison School Superintendent Dan Nerad on Poverty and Enrollment: “For every one student that comes into the MMSD, three leave it”
Kristin Czubkowski, via Jackie Woodruff:
All of the speakers were good, but I will admit I really enjoyed listening to Madison Metropolitan School District Superintendent Dan Nerad talk on the issue of poverty in our schools.
“Oftentimes, the statement is used as follows: Our children are our future. In reality, we are theirs.”
Nerad made one more point I found interesting, which was his explanation for why for every one student that comes into the MMSD, two to three students leave it. While MMSD has been well-recognized for having great schools and students, many of the schools have high concentrations of poverty (17 of 32 elementary schools have more than 50 percent of students on free or reduced lunch programs), which Nerad said can lead to perception issues about how MMSD uses its resources.
“From my perspective, it’s a huge issue that we must face as a community — for every one child coming in, two to three come out right now. I worry that a lot of it is based on this increasing poverty density that we have in our school district … Oftentimes that’s based on a perception of quality, and it’s based on a perception based on that oftentimes that we have more kids in need, that we have more kids with more resource needs, and oftentimes people feel that their own children’s needs may not be met in that equation.”
Recent open enrollment data.
Advocating Mayoral Control of Schools – in Milwaukee
Not long ago, the idea of placing the Milwaukee Public Schools under control of the city’s mayor was getting considerable discussion. Then two things happened. The Public Policy Forum did a study of other cities, which found no clear-cut answers as to whether a governance change improved their school districts.
The Forum also convened a panel of community leaders to discuss this, and the feeling was unanimous that this would make no difference to the success of MPS. From teachers union head Dennis Oulahan to business leader Tim Sheehy, there was not “a great deal of support for a change in governance,” moderator Mike Gousha concluded.
That seems to have killed the idea. After all, if the experts agree it wouldn’t do anything, and the study is equivocal, it must be a bad idea, right?
Wrong. The idea has great merit, and nothing in the study – or the statements of experts – proves otherwise. A system in which, say, the mayor appoints the school board members, much as he appoints the Fire and Police Commission, could have many benefits, including:
More attention to the problem: School Board members are elected in low-turnout elections in which a minuscule percentage of city residents vote. Mayoral elections are high-interest affairs that would automatically elevate the issue of education, while making the city’s most important officeholder accountable for the schools. We vote for the mayor based on how he does on property taxes and crime, but not on education, which is just as important to the city’s success. Why put so little value on the schools?
A less parochial school board. The teachers union routinely gets candidates elected who readily vote for increases in salaries and benefits. The typical opponent of the union is the business community. The board has swung back and forth between these interests, as their respective candidates get elected. By contrast, the mayor is answerable to the full spectrum of voters. His choices for the board are likely to be more independent.
Hudson, New Hampshire Fights Free Kindergarten
itizens of Hudson, N.H., are backing their school board’s decision to reject an unfunded state mandate to provide free kindergarten. The case gets a hearing Wednesday.
Hudson School District web site. Many links here, and here.
A State by State Look at High School Steriod Tests
A state-by-state look at results of results of steroids tests in high schools:
Florida
Tests administered: 600
Positive results: 1
Notes: Florida had a statewide testing program only during the 2007-08 school year.
Software Tests Patience in Prince George County Schools
A $4.1 million computer program designed to put Prince George’s County students’ grades, attendance and discipline data online has been plagued with errors in its first year, leading to botched schedules, an over-count of students and report cards that were delayed or, in some cases, simply wrong.
Since going online Aug. 19, SchoolMax has crashed four times, once for 17 hours, said W. Wesley Watts Jr., the school system’s chief information officer. Errors led to the duplication of 3,600 student identification numbers in the 128,000-student system; almost 300 were double-enrolled, leading to an inaccurate count of the student population. The delivery of report cards was delayed last semester, and some students have found they’ve gotten E’s instead of A’s. There have been problems doing things as straightforward as printing an alphabetical directory of students.
The latest hit is a six-day delay in the distribution of third-quarter progress reports, which will be distributed Thursday “due to the closure of schools because of snow on March 2 and a recent computer network outage,” administrators said in a statement.
“There are a lot of issues with SchoolMax. Some of them are technical. Some of them are data-related,” Watts told the school board. “If there is an issue, we need to know what that issue is. Telling us the grade book doesn’t work, or it stinks, doesn’t help me or our team.”
Verona High school students study the federal stimulus bill
It’s 7:30 in the morning and about 30 high school students are chomping on doughnuts and debating the merits of federal dollars used to fund everything from building child-care centers on U.S. Army bases to lead reduction programs.
The scene is a weekly occurrence at Verona High School where advanced placement students are analyzing the 407-page American Recovery and Reinvestment Act — commonly known as the stimulus bill — as part of an extra credit project.
The students must report the dollar amount appropriated under each title, summarize that section and react to how the money’s being spent.
“I frankly don’t see how that will help the economy or is a pressing need,” Kaitlin McLean, a Verona senior, said of about $90 million going to facilities that deal with passports and training. “Couldn’t $90 million be used to create jobs somewhere else?”
The goal is to have the entire document read by April 3 — an ambitious objective considering many legislators probably haven’t done the same.
Steve Coll has been blogging (and reading) the stimulus/splurge documents.
The Immigrant Paradox
The first generation comes to America and struggles, but their children do better and the third generation does even better. That’s how it’s supposed to work. But scholars are trying to understand the “immigrant paradox,” reports Education Week. The Americanized children of immigrants often do worse in school than the foreign-born generation, despite fewer English problems. American-born children have more health problems and are more likely to abuse alcohol and drugs and act violently.
Pennsylvania’s Cyber Charter Schools
When thousands of students ditch home computers and gather in makeshift classrooms across the state today, the future of their cyber charter schools is uncertain.
Testing begins on reading and math portions of the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment, the measure by which the state determines whether public schools are making “adequate yearly progress” under the federal No Child Left Behind Act. Last year, only three of the state’s 11 cyber schools — which educate more than 19,000 students — achieved AYP.
Traditional schools that fail to do so face corrective action from the state that increases in severity each succeeding year, up to a state takeover. Cyber schools face the threat of the state not renewing their five-year charters, effectively shutting them. Six charters are up in the next two years, and test scores will be a big factor in renewals, said Leah Harris, spokeswoman for the Pennsylvania Department of Education.
Bill Tucker has more.
Interest surges in leaving other jobs for teaching
Plenty of people dream of leaving their jobs to become teachers. Today, more people are actually doing it.
Peter Vos ran an Internet startup. Now he teaches computer science to middle school kids in Maryland.
Jaime McLaughlin used to do people’s taxes. Now he teaches math to sixth graders in Chicago.
Alisa Salvans was a makeup artist at Saks department store. Now she teaches high school chemistry in suburban Dallas.
These teachers, with real-life experience and often with deep knowledge of their subjects, are answering a call to service that is part of a strategy to dramatically boost the size and quality of the teaching work force.
Career switchers make up about one-third of the ranks of new teachers, and that number has jumped in the past decade. Now, as the recession deepens, even more people are deciding to become teachers.
Our Lady Queen of Peace School Principal Steve Bolser dies
Steve Bolser, the man with the Snoopy tie and the Charlie Brown “Never, ever give up” attitude, the principal at “QP” who really was a pal, died Saturday, a year after being told he had a cancerous brain tumor.
Bolser, 56, was the principal at the 470-student Our Lady Queen of Peace School since 1994 but had been in Catholic education for many years, working as a teacher at Edgewood Campus School and as principal of Edgewood High School.
The news of his illness was delivered last year while students were already coping with the death of a fellow student from brain cancer, and after Bolser had brought in specialists to train staff on how best to help children cope with illness and death.
“We were very grateful that along the whole journey the family was in constant communication with us, our pastor, and it was their desire to keep everyone full informed, it was a huge gift to everyone,” said Patty Chrsyt, acting principal at the school.
Bolser had a combination of teaching gifts to go along with his faith, she said, that endeared him to student and staff alike.
A Look at Wisconsin State Tax Funded K-12 Spending
Not only is one time revenue being used for ongoing expenses (which may be acceptable in these economic circumstance), but all this revenue is being used to offset state funds. When combined with the “current law” revenue cap increases estimated at $277 and $286 per member for the two years, this shifts the burden to local property taxpayers in significant ways.
However things go down, the state will move further from the 2/3 support concept and consequently the local property tax portion of school revenues will be increasing at a faster rate than the state portion (unless districts don’t tax to the limit, but that has some bad effects in subsequent years). I am still confused about the Governor’s and the LFB thoughts on IDEA and Title I, which appear to be at least partially contrary to the “supplement not supplant” provisions. I do know that there is lobbying going on from many quarters to expand the loopholes and allow more of the stimulus money to be used to fund existing, not expanded programs and services.
There are also some positives. Revenue cap increases are included at past levels, school safety, nurses and transportation are eased; the low revenue ceiling is raised, Special Education isn’t actually cut, SAGE and 4 K are given increases, albeit insufficient ones. It could be worse.
Madison School District Cuts Busing Costs by $926,343,09
Thanks to Erik Kass for sending this along.
We Should Not Be Surprised at These Outcomes, When We Teach our Children PowerPoint
A recently released “slideument” from General Motors. This document [PDF or [PPT] “explains” their March, 2009 buyer and dealer incentives. Via the Truth About Cars.
Related: “The Cognitive Style of Powerpoint“, “slideuments“, PowerPoint and Military Intelligence, PowerPoint does Rocket Science and Two Decades of PowerPoint, is the World a Better Place?
I am frequently amazed at the information sent around in such slideuments.
Will school finances end in tragedy?
The headlines are dramatic: a state running billions in debt with declining revenue and a legislature waiting anxiously for federal money to show up.
“All the world’s a stage” — beyond a doubt. The feat is to decide whether this is a comedy or tragedy amid a dismal economy and different players.
Like stock characters, lobbyists continue to collect in the halls of government to sell their wares.
The predictable talk of paying for education plays to the citizenry. Don’t raise taxes and do more with less — it’s the same old dichotomy. Lately there’s new irony, as suggested by Gov. Jim Doyle, that school boards should go to the table with “more creative ways” to bargain and without the QEO (qualified economic offer).
We’ve been focusing in the wrong place, according to Doyle. All we need is a “creative teacher compensation package.” Problem solved. So school boards just need to get more creative and drop the discussion on school finance and educational excellence? Talk about a plot twist!
The cynical souls suggest that now is the time for caution and control, no time to attempt school finance reform, though the current formula was a short-term solution whence it began. They heed us to plod along with conventional plans and wait for — who and when? Next year? The year after?
Transforming Workers and Work: Learning how to read the new knowledge economy.
THOUSANDS OF PROFESSIONAL JOBS IN THIS COUNTRY have been downsized or offshored, and the Americans who held them have been laid off. Where are those people now? Few have starved to death or the tabloids would have told us. Few have jumped from bridges or the security camera footage would be all over YouTube. All those poor souls somehow have continued to earn enough for bare subsistence, or better.
Like it or not, the underemployed eventually realize that they have become small-business people. They did not register with the SBA for loans; they just began creating wealth for themselves by selling stuff or services to others.
We live in the most adaptable organism on earth. With a computer and a link to a network, we can use our knowledge to adapt and create wealth.
FARMERS AND FACTORY WORKERS could tell us that economic activity has always had a knowledge component. It’s hard to create much wealth without skills. Now, for the first time in human history, knowledge is becoming the dominating determinant of wealth creation.
There are giant companies, such as Microsoft, that manufacture almost nothing. They don’t ship anything except computer disks loaded with data, and sometimes not even that. Even an old-line “heavy-iron” company like IBM has transformed its manufacturing business into a different kind of wealth-creating enterprise, in which 60% of sales come from service contracts.
Paying It Forward as a Full-Time Job
When Trevor Patzer was growing up in Ketchum, Idaho, he received an unusual offer from family friend Ric Ohrstrom: get admitted to New Hampshire’s prestigious St. Paul’s School, and Mr. Ohrstrom would foot the entire bill for his schooling there.
Mr. Patzer was accepted and graduated three years later. He says the experience of someone offering to pay for his high-school education had a profound effect on him, and the gift was always in the back of his mind, even as he moved to college and into the work world.
After graduating from Brown University, Mr. Patzer, now 35, headed off to Andersen Consulting to be a systems integration consultant. “It was that or investment banking,” he says. But it didn’t take him long to realize that there was more to life than “coding someone else’s computers,” he says. “I knew it wasn’t the best fit for me. I’m a people person.” Still, he kept plugging away in consulting for two more years.
During one of his vacations in 1998, he decided to visit Nepal and see “the biggest mountain in the world.” While there, Mr. Patzer had another life-changing experience and it had little to do with the majestic awe of Mount Everest. His tour guide for the trip was Usha Acharya, an author and the wife of Nepal’s former ambassador to the United Nations. While they took in various historic sites together, she talked to Mr. Patzer about the plight of poor children in Nepal. He decided on the spot that he wanted to fund the education of a Nepalese child, in the same spirit Mr. Ohrstrom had funded his education. When Mr. Patzer asked Ms. Acharya if she knew of such a child, she spoke of a young girl who could benefit from his philanthropy.
Oakland officials sue over charter school funding
The Oakland school board has sued State Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O’Connell, saying he violated state law and financial common sense when he gave city charter schools $450,000 out of the district’s bank account.
The lawsuit, filed Thursday, is the latest volley in a fight for power and authority over the Oakland schools. O’Connell has controlled the purse strings since the state bailed out the nearly bankrupt district with a $100 million loan in 2003.
O’Connell said giving additional funding to the district’s 32 charters schools – about $60 for each of their 7,500 students – was an equity issue. The alternative public schools were left out of a parcel tax passed by voters a year ago.
“Clearly all of the public schools in Oakland are deserving of resources, including the district’s charter schools,” said O’Connell spokeswoman Hilary McLean.
Duncan: Schools must improve to get stimulus money
Education Secretary Arne Duncan says schools must make drastic changes to get money from a special $5 billion fund in the economic stimulus bill.
“We’re going to reward those states and those districts that are willing to challenge the status quo and get dramatically better,” Duncan said Monday at the White House.
Those who keep doing the same old thing, however, won’t be eligible for the money, he said.
Schools will be getting tens of billions more dollars through regular channels. On top of that, Duncan will have an unprecedented $5 billion to award for lasting reforms.
To get an award, schools and states must show they have been spending their money wisely. They are supposed to find innovative ways to close the achievement gap between black and Latino children who lag behind their white counterparts in more affluent schools.
Specifically, states are supposed to:
- Improve teacher quality and get good teachers into high-poverty schools;
- Set up sophisticated data systems to track student learning;
- Boost the quality of academic standards and tests;
- Intervene to help struggling schools.
It will be interesting to see how real this is.
An Outbreak of Autism, or a Statistical Fluke?
Ayub Abdi is a cute 5-year-old with a smile that might be called shy if not for the empty look in his eyes. He does not speak. When he was 2, he could say “Dad,” “Mom,” “give me” and “need water,” but he has lost all that.
He does scream and spit, and he moans a loud “Unnnnh! Unnnnh!” when he is unhappy. At night he pounds the walls for hours, which led to his family’s eviction from their last apartment.
As he is strapped into his seat in the bus that takes him to special education class, it is hard not to notice that there is only one other child inside, and he too is a son of Somali immigrants.
“I know 10 guys whose kids have autism,” said Ayub’s father, Abdirisak Jama, a 39-year-old security guard. “They are all looking for help.”
Autism is terrifying the community of Somali immigrants in Minneapolis, and some pediatricians and educators have joined parents in raising the alarm. But public health experts say it is hard to tell whether the apparent surge of cases is an actual outbreak, with a cause that can be addressed, or just a statistical fluke.
Obama’s Education Chief Knows Stars Are Aligned for Real Change
U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner may be the Obama cabinet member facing the biggest crisis — the economic one — but Education Secretary Arne Duncan may be the one holding the biggest opportunity in his hands.
It is this: He inherits the best chance in a generation to really shake up an American education system that is uneven and underperforming. And he knows it.
“I see this as an extraordinary opportunity,” Mr. Duncan says in an interview. “We have a couple of things going in our direction that create what I call the perfect storm for reform.”
If the economy ever heals, and if Afghanistan doesn’t blow up, this quest to change the way Americans educate their kids may emerge as one of the biggest dramas of the Obama term. Here are the components of that perfect storm for change that Mr. Duncan describes:
There’s virtually a national consensus — one that certainly includes business leaders panting for a better-prepared work force — that America’s ossified education system needs a big shake-up. Moreover, a bipartisan trail toward real change was blazed by the Bush administration (which gets too little credit for doing so).
Sweden’s School Choice: Vouchers for All
“Education is so important that you cannot leave it to just one producer” – Sweden’s former Education Minister, Per Unckel; Video by Lance Izumi. Izumi is co-author of “Not as Good as You Think: Why the Middle Class Needs School Choice“.
France Set to Raise Drinking Age
Garçon! A glass of red.
Teenagers under the age of 18 could soon lose the right to drink wine in France because of a new bill that would tighten restrictions on alcohol sales.
The government of President Nicolas Sarkozy has drafted the bill, which would raise France’s minimum drinking age for wine and beer to 18 from 16. The government says it would reduce a dangerous addiction among youths. A vote on the bill is expected to take place Wednesday at the National Assembly, where it is likely to pass, as Mr. Sarkozy’s center-right coalition has a majority of the votes. A final vote in the Senate could take place in April.
France has had a liberal approach to alcohol thus far. Unlike most other countries, France has two drinking ages: Young people can drink or purchase wine and beer from the age of 16 and hard liquor from 18. Bartenders and shopkeepers don’t usually check the identification cards of their customers, however young.
The powerful lobby of French winemakers says it won’t try to derail the law, but thinks the government is making a big mistake. A stricter law, winemakers say, could reverse the age-old French custom of parents teaching children how to taste and appreciate wine at the family meal.
The risk of the new law, they say, is a habit of binge drinking imported from the U.S., where the drinking age is 21, and the U.K., where studies show one in four adult men and one in three adult women are heavy drinkers.
Milwaukee Schools Chief Seeks to Disrupt the Status Quo
Superintendent William Andrekopoulos on Sunday called for using tens of millions of dollars in federal economic stimulus money “to disrupt the status quo” in Milwaukee Public Schools in a bid to increase student achievement.
Making school days for kindergarten through eighth grader longer by something less than an hour a day and pushing the entire MPS system to switch to a “year-round” schedule, in which summer vacation is shortened, were two of the ideas suggested by Andrekopoulos.
He also called for improving teaching quality by giving staff members more time to prepare for class and collaborate with other teachers and by providing teachers more training.
Andrekopoulos said the short time frame being set for spending economic stimulus money and the urgency of improving student achievement mean that MPS should aim to implement the changes by the start of the coming school year. Decisions must be made by about May 1, he said.
A set of public meetings will be held, beginning Wednesday, to get public reaction and allow people to make their own suggestions on what MPS should do.
Grade Inflation at American Colleges and Universities
gradeinflation.com, via a kind reader:
This web site is an outgrowth of an op-ed piece that I wrote on grade inflation for the Washington Post, “Where All Grades Are Above Average” In the process of writing that article, I collected data on trends in grading from about 30 colleges and universities. I found that grade inflation, while waning beginning in the mid-1970s, resurfaced in the mid-1980s. The rise continued unabated at virtually every school for which data were available. By March 2003, I had collected data on grades from over 80 schools. Then I stopped collecting data until December 2008, when I thought it was a good time for a new assessment.
I now have data on average grades from over 180 schools (with a combined enrollment of over two million undergraduate students). I want to thank those that have helped me by either sending information or telling me where I can find it. I especially want to thank Chris Healy and Lee Coursey who, combined, uncovered over 50 web sites with detailed data. Chris Healy has written a research paper with me on the topic of grading at American colleges and universities that we finished March 2, 2009; preprints are available upon request. I also want to thank those that have sent me emails on how to improve my graphics. Additional suggestions are always welcome.
View University of Wisconsin-Madison grades by College and Department from 1998 onward here.
“Dumbing Down” UK University Standards
wo senior academics at a Manchester university have accused it of “dumbing down” higher education.
Sue Evans and Walter Cairns, both lecturers at Manchester Metropolitan University (MMU), said the marks of failing students had been “bumped up”.
They also claim the university will not take action against students who fail to turn up for lectures.
Deputy vice chancellor Kevin Bonnett said the comments were an “insult” to the university and its students.
A group of university lecturers have painted a bleak picture of the falling standards of British higher education in a 500-page dossier presented to an MPs’ inquiry.
The academics warn of an across-the-board dumbing down with degrees becoming increasingly easy, widespread plagiarism and institutional pressure from university bosses to award students higher grades than they deserve.
The lecturers come from a wide range of universities including Oxford, Birmingham, Cardiff, Sussex and Manchester Metropolitan, reported The Sunday Times.
Graduates throwing mortarboards in the air
The aim of the dossier, which blames the problems on university expansion without adequate funding, is to force Universities Secretary John Denham to take action to safeguard standards of higher education.
One academic to give evidence is Stuart Derbyshire, a senior lecturer in psychology at Birmingham University.
More from Greame Paton and Yojana Sharma.
Where Education and Assimilation Collide
Walking the halls of Cecil D. Hylton High School outside Washington, it is hard to detect any trace of the divisions that once seemed fixtures in American society.
The United States has experienced the greatest surge in immigration since the early 20th century, with one in five residents a recent immigrant or a close relative of one. This series examines how American institutions are being pressed to adjust.
Students in Hylton High School’s program for English learners, like Leon Peng and Nuwan Gamage, at right, cross paths in the hallways with mainstream students. But the groups seldom socialize. More Photos >
Two girls, a Muslim in a headscarf and a strawberry blonde in tight jeans, stroll arm in arm. A Hispanic boy wearing a Barack Obama T-shirt gives a high-five to a black student with glasses and an Afro. The lanky homecoming queen, part Filipino and part Honduran, runs past on her way to band practice. The student body president, a son of Laotian refugees, hangs fliers about a bake sale.
But as old divisions vanish, waves of immigration have fueled new ones between those who speak English and those who are learning how.
Walk with immigrant students, and the rest of Hylton feels a world apart. By design, they attend classes almost exclusively with one another. They take separate field trips. And they organize separate clubs.
Why is NEA cheering Obama’s education ideas?
The National Education Association appears to be humming “Stand By Your Man,” even after President Barack Obama promoted both merit pay and an expansion of charter schools in his recent comments about education.
What gives? Whenever a conservative leader talks about pay differences for educators instead of one-size-fits-all raises, teachers’ unions say “no,” “no” and, “hell, no.” And whenever a Republican supports charter schools, NEA members start calling politicians enemies of public schools.
In a statement released after Obama’s “cradle-to-career” education speech last week, NEA President Dennis Van Roekel welcomed Obama’s “vision” for strengthening public education and said, “He’s off to a solid start. … His ‘cradle-to-career’ proposal mirrors what NEA and its 3.2million members have been advocating.”
The union clearly heard what it wanted to hear (more money) and ignored much of Obama’s talk. Merit pay, charter school expansion and more school accountability are not what the union has been advocating. Given the NEA’s glowing review, I wondered if the union would even have blinked if the president demanded an end to undemocratic, mandatory unionism. (That was not on Obama’s radar, needless to say.)
Wisconsin DPI Superintendent Debate Friday 3/21/2009
A debate between the two candidates for Wisconsin state superintendent will be broadcast statewide Friday night on public television and radio.
Tony Evers and Rose Fernandez are running to be the next superintendent of the Department of Public Instruction. The election for the nonpartisan position is April 7.
Evers currently serves as the deputy superintendent. Fernandez is a leading advocate of virtual schools.
How To Stop Google From Following You
A simple tool lets you opt out of advertising programs that track your Web clicks
Hundreds of thousands of Web sites show ads provided by Google, such as those little text ads that offer you everything from diets to dog training. Now Google has announced plans to track your clicks across all these sites, and then serve up ads personalized to your tastes. Visit a bunch of electronics-related sites, say, and the next site you view may show you an ad for the latest must-have gadget, even if you’re now reading about ways to reduce stress through yogic meditations.
As Big Brother as it sounds, this is actually something that many advertising companies already do. But don’t worry: There’s a way to stop Google–and all the others–from prying.
First, Google has offered up several ways to change and reduce the info it stores about you. Using its new Ads Preferences Manager, you can delete any of the interests that Google believes you have, such as Entertainment or Travel. You can even add interests, if you happen to like personalized advertising.
Push for financial literacy spreads to schools
Create a budget and stick to it. Shop around for the best price. Pay off credit-card balances each month.
Roy Kobert set aside his work as a bankruptcy attorney one Friday morning to teach these and other personal-finance lessons at Boone High School. He starts by showing the 11 students of this senior-level business class a Saturday Night Live sketch in which Chris Parnell touts a book called, “Don’t Buy Stuff You Can’t Afford.” He garners laughs then delves into the basics.
The students listen up. Three say they already have credit cards. One says his dad makes him read books by personal finance expert Suze Orman. All say most of their friends have no idea how to manage money.
“They spend stuff on little stuff,” says Hillary Haskins, a 17-year-old senior. “It adds up.”
Mr. Kobert knows many adults never will master what he’s teaching. But with the economy spiraling, interest in financial literacy is growing. Nationwide, a movement is spreading, with the emphasis on children and young adults who advocates want to reach before credit-card companies do.
Congress vs. Washington DC Kids
Congressional Democrats succeeded this week in crippling a school choice program operating in the nation’s capital. For the last five years, the D.C. Opportunity Scholarships have made private schooling affordable to 1,700 poor children. Rather than reauthorizing the program for another five-year term, Democrats have all but ensured it will die after next year.
House Appropriations Committee Chairman David R. Obey, Wisconsin Democrat, has asked D.C. Public Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee to prepare for the return of voucher students to the city’s broken public schools.
Sen. Ted Kennedy’s office claims the senator opposed the voucher program from the start because it “takes funds from very needy public schools to send students to unaccountable private schools.” (The House Budget Committee holds hearings today on the U.S. Education Department budget).
But just how needy are D.C. public schools? To find out, I added up all the K-12-related expenditures in the current D.C. budget, excluding preschool, higher-education and charter school items. The total comes to $1.29 billion. Divide that by the official enrollment count of 48,646 students, and it yields a total per-pupil spending figure of $26,555.
Milwaukee’s St. Anthony to add high school
Govanne Martinez said it will be an honor to be in the first ninth-grade class at St. Anthony School.
Sebastian Pichardo said, “I want to test how smart I am, how much I can achieve.” The best way to do that, he thinks, is to stay at the school where he has been since he was 4 years old.
The two St. Anthony eighth-graders are among more than 90 students who have enrolled in what will be the first new Catholic high school in the Milwaukee archdiocese in more than 25 years. It also will be the first Catholic high school to operate on the south side and within the boundaries of the city of Milwaukee since St. Mary’s Academy closed in 1991.
St. Anthony is already the largest kindergarten through eighth-grade school in Milwaukee, with 1,045 students, all but a handful participants in the publicly funded private-school voucher program. That makes the school one of the largest Catholic grade schools in the United States
And now: St. Anthony, the high school.
School leaders plan to add a grade a year and reach 400 students or more by the fifth year.
A building just north of W. Mitchell St. on S. 9th St. is expected to house the high school for the first couple years, said Terry Brown, president of the school. That’s in the block north of St. Anthony church and the several buildings used now by the school’s upper grades.
SAT Question: Do You Think It is Sometimes Necessary to Be Impolite to Get Your Wa
My daughter took the SAT this morning. The essay question she was asked to answer was more or less what you see in the headline. How is that for a coincidence? She thought it was pretty funny to see the question, and in talking to her about her answer she wrote, I got the first hint ever that she had actually read The No Asshole Rule, or at least parts of it. I hope it helped…..
Information Technology Academy
University of Wisconsin-Madison:
Sponsored by the UW-Madison Division of Information Technology (DoIT), ITA is an innovative, 4-year pre-college technology access and training program for talented students of color and economically disadvantaged students attending Madison Public Schools. Our mission is to prepare students for technical, academic, and personal excellence in today’s Information Age.
Each year, ITA competitively recruits 30 students in their final semester of 8th grade to participate in the program. Selected students receive four years of intensive training in preparation for high tech, IT related careers; in addition to intensive academic support in preparation for competitive University admissions and study. The Academy’s dual focus on academic excellence and technological literacy prepares promising students for learning and leadership in the 21st century digital age, and continues the University of Wisconsin’s long tradition of excellence and service.
Through hands-on training, mentoring, leadership development, community service, and internship opportunities, ITA students develop the knowledge and skills to increase their own, as well as their community’s access to technology; while gaining valuable skills and experiences as future leaders and professionals.
ITA is one of only five information technology outreach programs for high school students in the State of Wisconsin, and the only program of its kind and scope in the Madison area.
MPS’ Parental Enticement Program Spent Freely, Widely But, oh, the questionable expenditures. Now some are banned.
Tax dollars intended to help parents improve their children’s academic achievement have for years routinely been spent by Milwaukee public schools on everything from roller skating to bowling to water-park field trips, an investigation by Wisconsin Interest has found.
Thousands of dollars were also spent on fast food, DJs, prizes, gift certificates and other goodies and giveaways. One school spent $556 in parental-involvement money to buy 250 pumpkins. Another spent $686 for a Milwaukee Bucks “Family Night.”
Even when a clear academic purpose is evident, there are often questions about excess. Two schools, according to invoice descriptions, spent more than $17,000 to rent hotel and banquet-hall space for student recognition ceremonies.
Research, as well as common sense, has long shown that having engaged and informed parents is one of the most important ways to increase a child’s success in school – and in life. Recognizing that, the federal government has funneled “parental involvement” tax dollars to many school districts across the country.
This year alone, schools run by MPS will receive $38.2 million from the federal government’s Title I program. Like other large districts, MPS must set aside at least 1% for parental-involvement initiatives. The district goes further and sets aside 2% – which would amount to about $764,000 in the 2008-2009 school year.
Minnesota Democrats Propose $1 Billion Education Cut
Democrats in the Minnesota Senate are proposing deep cuts in education funding to help balance the state’s budget. Their plan includes a cut in early education through 12th grade funding of nearly $1 billion dollars. They would also cut state funding for higher education by $221 million dollars. The Senate DFL plan is the first proposal from state lawmakers to erase the state’s $4.6 billion deficit.
The plan would cut spending by 7 percent across all budget areas. The largest programs hit are schools, health and human services and aid to local government. In total, the plan cuts $2.4 billion in spending. The plan also relies on $2 billion in unspecified new revenue.
At a news conference, DFL Senate Majority Leader Larry Pogemiller said the cuts are needed to stabilize the budget in the long term. He said Governor Pawlenty’s proposal to use one-time money, accounting shifts and spending cuts does not adequately address the problem.
“It’s a day of reckoning for Minnesotans, both for elected officials both in the executive branch and the legislative branch,” Pogemiller said. “We need to do our duty to balance the state budget for the long-term financial health of the state.”
What is most notable is that Senate Democrats are proposing $1 billion in cuts to early childhood education and K thru 12 schools. K-12 funding is required under the Minnesota Constitution and lawmakers have been reluctant to cut those programs for fear of angering voters. Senate Education Finance Chair Leroy Stumpf, of Plummer, said the depth of the budget problem, along with a sputtering economy, mean all programs have to be on the table.
Runaway daughters
Debra Gwartney was trying to escape a failed marriage when she moved from Tucson, Ariz., to Eugene, Ore., in the early ’90s with her four daughters in tow. What the newly single mother didn’t foresee was that, as she fled from her past to a different city and job, her relationship with her girls would be forever transformed, too. Enraged by the divorce and the move, her two oldest daughters, Amanda and Stephanie, soon ran away, seeking adventure on the streets and shelter in abandoned buildings with other teenagers like them.
In “Live Through This: A Mother’s Memoir of Runaway Daughters and Reclaimed Love,” Gwartney relives the private desperation and shame of being a mother whose teenage daughters disappear for days at a time, only dropping in occasionally when no one else is home to stock up on supplies, leaving empty beer cans, fetid clothes, empty cigarette boxes and puddles of brilliant Manic Panic hair dye behind. As the girls’ absences stretch to weeks and months, Gwartney recalls her frantic searches for them, first in Eugene and then in San Francisco. Along the way, she delves into her own culpability in the family dynamic that drove them away.
A former correspondent for the Oregonian and Newsweek, Gwartney wrote about her relationship with her eldest daughter, Amanda, in Salon back in 1998. Debra, Amanda and Stephanie also appeared together on “This American Life” in March 2002, in an episode tellingly titled “Didn’t Ask to Be Born.”
Teachers to Face Individual, School Evaluations of Student Success
District teachers will be evaluated on their individual effectiveness and their school’s overall success in improving student performance under an assessment system to be unveiled this fall, Schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee said yesterday.
In her most detailed public comments to date on planned changes to the evaluation system, Rhee said at a D.C. Council hearing that the approach would combine standardized test scores where practical, intensive classroom observation and “value added” measurements of students’ growth during the year.
Teachers would also be allowed to set buildingwide goals for achievement that would be used in evaluating their performance.
Rhee said the Professional Performance Evaluation Program, which the District has used in recent years, is inadequate and does not reflect a teacher’s worth or how much he or she has helped students grow. She said the federal No Child Left Behind law, as written, is too narrowly focused on test results and not student progress from year to year.
The Early-Ed Big Lie
In a speech on education this morning at the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, President Obama repeats questionable statistics in support of his bid to expand the government’s monopoly on education back to the womb, asserting that “$1 of early education leads to $10 in saved social services.”
Unfortunately he’s referring to small-scale programs that involved extensive and often intensive total-family intervention rather than simple “early education.”
In contrast to the- real-world school choice programs have been tested extensively with solid, random-assignment studies. Nine out of ten of these studies find statistically significant improvement in academic achievement for at least one subgroup.
Chancellor, Superintendent address the “business” of education
Education depends on state funding to survive, but that funding is not the only key to its success. Some educators say business leaders have plenty to do with it. It might not be the most obvious connection, but education and business go hand in hand.
It certainly does if you ask our top educators, such as Higher Education Chancellor Jim Rogers and Clark County School District Superintendent Walt Rulffes. Both attended a business luncheon Thursday to deliver a message: Even in tough times, education will bring good returns.