| Public Education Network Weekly NewsBlast
"Public Involvement. Public Education. Public Benefit."
February 19, 2010
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Two-thirds of teachers feel left out of ed policy debate
Sixty-nine percent of teachers believe their voices aren't heard in the debate on education, according to the first in a series of three reports based on the MetLife Survey of the American Teacher, which focuses on what collaboration looks like in schools and to what degree it is currently practiced. The survey also finds that teachers (67 percent) and principals (78 percent) believe increased collaboration among teachers and school leaders would have a major impact on improving student achievement. Nearly all teachers engage in some type of collaborative activity at their school each week, on average spending 2.7 hours per week in structured collaboration, with 24 percent of teachers spending more than three hours per week. Teachers (80 percent) and principals (89 percent) believe that a school culture where students feel responsible and accountable for their own education would strongly improve student achievement. Most students (73 percent) definitely agree it's their responsibility to do the work it takes to succeed in school, but only 43 percent of teachers say all or most of their students exhibit this sense of responsibility. The survey questioned a national sample of 1,003 public school teachers and 500 principals of grades K through 12, and 1,018 public school students in grades 3 through 12.
See the report: http://www.metlife.com/about/corporate-profile/citizenship/metlife-foundation/metlife-survey-of-the-american-teacher.html?WT.ac=PRO_ML-Foundation-TeacherSurvey_5-9383_T7988-AB-metlife-foundation&oc_id=PRO_ML-Foundation-TeacherSurvey_5-9383_T7988-AB-metlife-foundation
Identifying readiness and implementing deep reform
Researchers know a teacher's effectiveness has greater impact on student learning than any other factor under the control of school systems, including class size, school size, or quality of after-school programs. Despite this, the education community has focused too little on the recruitment, evaluation, development, placement, and retention of highly effective teachers, according to a new series of briefs from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Rather than evaluating performance and treating teachers differently on that basis, they are treated uniformly and rewarded for longevity and degrees. As a step toward changing this, the foundation has asked nine school districts and one coalition of charter management organizations to propose strategies for significantly improving teacher effectiveness and for measuring it. Although sites have not yet implemented the proposed strategies, their planning processes have yielded critical lessons and approaches to identifying site readiness, which are described in the first brief. This identifies four categories that represent a minimum readiness threshold that all sites should seek before embarking on deep reform: leadership alignment, a culture of data-driven decision-making, stakeholder engagement, and policies that support improvement efforts. The second brief elaborates on these site conditions that support implementation of reform, offering strategies to cultivate them. The third brief is forthcoming.
See the first report: http://www.gatesfoundation.org/united-states/Pages/empowering-effective-teachers-readiness.aspx
See the second report: http://www.gatesfoundation.org/united-states/Pages/empowering-effective-teachers-strategy.aspx
Same data, aiming for different solutions
Three urban school districts -- Springfield, Mass; Durham, N.C.; and Columbus, Ohio -- will receive funding from the foundation of the National Education Association to improve instruction, close achievement gaps, and stimulate parental involvement, Education Week reports. The $3.75 million in funding is the first major scaling-up of the foundation's six-year-old Closing the Achievement Gaps initiative. "The three sites we've picked have shown district capacity to collect data and to look at data in ways that can drive instructional change," said William Miles, program director for the NEA Foundation. "We think a kind of rut districts get into is in looking into the same data and drawing the same conclusions from that data. If you put a collaborative process in place, and you ask questions about the sources and analysis of data, you'll start to see the problem differently, in ways that will move you to some different solutions." Though the plans differ, they share common elements that include setting up teams of teachers and administrators to review student-achievement data, encouraging teachers to visit student homes, and establishing joint labor-management panels to oversee the work. One thrust of the funding also reflects what appears to be a focus by both national teachers' unions on initiatives that make use of joint union-labor management panels, according to Ed Week.
Read more: http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2010/02/11/22nea.h29.html?tkn=WYBFjrR99DAnup5W47ZckitiRPajLJ68BCwF&cmp=clp-ecseclips
Two studies probe the legacies of Title IX
Separate studies from two economists offer persuasive evidence that team sports can result in lifelong improvements to education, work, and health prospects of women, reports The New York Times. Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 required schools and colleges receiving federal money to furnish the same opportunities for girls as they did for boys. Just six years after its enactment, the percentage of girls playing team sports leapt sixfold, from about four percent to 25 percent. In one study, Betsey Stevenson at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania focused on state-by-state trends in girls' sports, "untangling the effects of sports participation from other confounding factors" like school size, climate, social, and personal differences among athletes. She came close to finding a cause-and-effect relationship between high school sports participation and achievement later in life. Robert Kaestner at the University of Illinois at Chicago looked at rates of obesity and physical activity in women who had been in high school in the 1970s as Title IX was taking effect compared with similar women from earlier years. He found the increase in girls' athletic participation caused by Title IX was associated with a seven percent lower risk of obesity 20 to 25 years later, when women were in their late 30s and early 40s. Both reports show that schools have not reached gender parity in terms of sports participation, despite gains. They also have ramifications for impoverished public school systems, where comprehensive athletics programs are far less prevalent than in privately funded schools.
Read more: http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/15/as-girls-become-women-sports-pay-dividends/
Q & A with Goeffrey Canada
As part of its issue devoted to an in-depth look at the Harlem Children's Zone (HCZ), City Limits interviewed its founder and director, Goeffrey Canada. In the question-and-answer, Canada explained that the only marker of success for the antipoverty initiative is whether its participants graduate from college. All other measures are "interim." He concedes that by this metric, it's difficult to tell if HCZ is working 10 years through a 20-year cycle. However, the program uses these same interim tests to monitor outcomes at each step, starting with its first, Baby College. Canada has set a 65 percent positive student outcome as the universal goal -- the so-called tipping point -- but says there is no science behind this number; it's common sense. "Kids do what their friends do If you get a whole bunch of kids doing positive things instead of negative things, should you expect that to have an impact on other kids? Absolutely." HCZ has certain underpinnings that cohere into a philosophy, Canada explains. "One is that you create pipelines for kids and you keep them in it, you don't stop." Another is working on a large scale: "If you have 5,000 kids in trouble, and you serve 200 kids, you're not going to change the outcome." Third and fourth are constant evaluation of outcomes, and rebuilding the community that hosts your program. "I want for my kids what every middle-class person wants," says Canada. "That's my science When the middle class don't want it, I don't want it."
Read more: http://www.citylimits.org/news/article.cfm?article_id=3874
Related: http://www.citylimits.org/news/article.cfm?article_id=3884
TFA dealt potential blow in president's new budget
Under an Obama administration proposal to launch a grant competition for teacher training programs, Teach for America (TFA) would lose its uncontested claim on $18 million in federal funding, The Washington Post reports. This is a "surprising setback" for a program viewed favorably by federal officials, lawmakers, and philanthropists, but Education Secretary Arne Duncan said the proposal merges with other programs and would make $235 million available for initiatives to recruit and prepare teachers for high-need schools. "We think there's a chance for programs that are doing a great job to actually increase their funding," Duncan told reporters last week when asked about Teach for America. "It's an expanded pool of resources and we want the best to rise to the top... There's a big, big opportunity out there for high performers." Leaders at TFA have expressed concern, however, since they are counting on federal funding to help finance an expansion; a dedicated grant is perhaps more valuable to the organization than the chance to win increased money. Teach for America has received federal education funding for several years, including a $14.9 million grant in the last fiscal year. Whether the administration's proposal will win congressional approval remains to be seen, according to The Post.
Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/11/AR2010021103024.html
Toward a national system of data on student educational progress
An infrastructure is emerging that would make it possible for dozens of states to share data about the students in their K-12 and postsecondary education systems, creating the equivalent of a national system of data on students' educational progress, reports Inside Higher Ed. Many policymakers say the ability to gather and analyze such information is essential to reaching the goal of getting more Americans into and out of higher education. After Congressional Republicans quashed the Bush administration's proposal for a truly federal "unit record" database as part of its existing Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System, a coalition of foundations, research groups, and now, the Obama administration are looking to develop statewide data systems that could be linked. "There are a very small number of data elements that are really central to educational progress and achievement, and sometimes separate standards [and definitions] for K-12 and higher education," explained Paul Lingenfelter, president of the State Higher Education Executive Officers. "Where there needs to be communication between the two, like in terms of students' academic preparation and academic success, this would create consistent standards so that communication could take place." Some fear, however, that a massive receptacle of data on students would inevitably impinge on individual privacy.
Read more: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/02/16/data
Colleges getting public vote of no confidence
A recent study from Public Agenda and the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education finds that most Americans think colleges today operate too much like businesses, more concerned with their bottom line than with the educational experience of students, according to The New York Times. This is an increase to 60 percent, from 52 percent in 2007. The report also found most Americans feel colleges could admit far more students without lowering quality or raising prices, and could spend less to maintain a high quality of education. "One of the really disturbing things about this, for those of us who work in higher education," said Patrick Callan, president of the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education, "is the vote of no confidence we're getting from the public. They think college is important, but they're really losing trust in the management and leadership." The survey found that a growing number of Americans believe college is essential to success -- 55 percent, compared with 31 percent in 2000. At the same time, fewer -- 28 percent, compared with 45 percent a decade earlier -- think college is available to the majority of qualified, motivated students. On the positive side, nine in 10 Americans say it's somewhat or very likely that their own high-school-age child will attend college, and the majority believe almost anyone who needs financial help to go to college can get loans or financial aid, but 83 percent said students had to borrow too much money if they do so. The report is based on a survey of more than 1,000 Americans.
Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/17/education/17college.html?scp=1&sq=Squeeze%20Play&st=cse
Who needs charters when you have 'private public schools'?
A new report from the Fordham Institute examines the phenomenon of what it dubs "private public schools." By the report's definition, these are schools where low-income pupils make up less than five percent of the student body -- and more than 1.7 million American children attend these 2,817 schools across the United States. In some metropolitan areas, this equates to one in six public-school students, and one in four white kids. Nationwide, more children attend "private public schools" than attend charters. "Taxpayers willingly spend billions of dollars on these exclusive public schools," said Chester E. Finn, Jr., the institute's president, "though they are, in practical terms, off-limits to poor kids. And few if any elected officials raise any fuss. It's hypocritical if not discriminatory of them to turn around and oppose charters, vouchers, and other school choice programs that would give truly needy children a shot at a comparable education." The analysis examined public elementary, middle, and high schools, using information from the federal government's Common Core of Data for 2007-2008. The authors write that although they did not investigate school relationships to academic achievement or effectiveness, they "hope this report spurs additional research which might shed some light on these and other issues."
See the report: http://edexcellence.net/index.cfm/news_private-public-schools
Related: http://www.eduwonk.com/2010/02/the-poor-you-will-have-always-with-you-not-in-some-public-schools.html
BRIEFLY NOTED
Is 'Morally Straight' morally acceptable?
Persistent messages and practices of discrimination towards gays and atheists are still propagated as part of the Boy Scouts official policy, and that's a pity.
http://cookross.typepad.com/cook_ross_blog/2010/02/boyscouts.html
Less violent news from Alabama
The state's House of Representatives has blocked Gov. Bob Riley's efforts to allow charters.
http://www.montgomeryadvertiser.com/article/20100211/NEWS02/2110317/1009/news02/Panel-vetoes-plan-for-charter-schools
Value-added to be part of Houston teacher evals
The Houston school board has given final approval to a policy allowing the firing of instructors whose students fall short on standardized tests.
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/6863554.html
An education bust to parallel the housing crisis
The number of public schools closing in Arizona has almost tripled in the past three years, according to figures provided by the state Department of Education, which may be due to the financial crisis, according to the state superintendent of education.
http://www.havasunews.com/articles/2010/02/15/news/doc4b78d9b4a1c5b820003697.txt
Eight states advance 'early college' concept
Dozens of public high schools in each will allow 10th graders who pass a battery of tests to get a diploma two years early and immediately enroll in community college.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/18/education/18educ.html
Oopsy daisy
The New Teacher Project has reconciled new data with that used in its widely-discussed "Widget Effect" report, with ramifications for the report's conclusions.
http://scholasticadministrator.typepad.com/thisweekineducation/2010/02/thompson-tntp-corrects-reconciles-inaccurate-data-in-the-widget-effect.html#more
GRANTS AND FUNDING OPPORTUNITIES
McGraw-Hill Companies: Harold McGraw, Jr. Prize in Education
The 2008 Harold W. McGraw, Jr. Prize in Education celebrates the theme of global awareness in U.S. education and recognizes those behind educational programs that help students develop the knowledge and skills they need to function as workers, citizens, and fulfilled individuals in an increasingly interconnected world. Maximum award: $25,000. Eligibility: policymakers, leaders in higher education, and school-based personnel. Deadline: March 19, 2010.
http://www.mcgraw-hill.com/prize/about_history.shtml
National Council for the Social Studies: Defense of Academic Freedom Award
The NCSS Defense of Academic Freedom Award is given annually to honor those who have distinguished themselves in defending the principles of academic freedom in specific controversies, in fostering academic freedom through advocacy, and in defending or advocating the freedom to teach and learn. Maximum award: $1,500; commemorative gift; Annual Conference session presentation; publicity. Eligibility: classroom teachers, professionals in other areas of education, students, parents, community groups, and members of other organizations (preference will be given to social studies educators) who are or have been engaged in activities that support academic freedom in the face of personal challenge or promote awareness of and support for academic freedom. The defense or advocacy of academic freedom must have been related to the teaching of social studies. Deadline: March 21, 2010.
http://www.socialstudies.org/awards/academicfreedom
Hitachi Foundation: Yoshiyama Young Entrepreneurs
The Yoshiyama Young Entrepreneurs Program supports young entrepreneurs who have formed financially viable businesses that create jobs, supply goods or services, or use internal management practices enabling low-wealth individuals the opportunity to achieve greater economic security. Maximum award: $50,000 over two years, access to technical resources, and a peer learning community. Eligibility: entrepreneurs ages 18-29 who are operating businesses that are 1-5 years old and have been generating revenue for a minimum of the last 12 months. Deadline: March 22, 2010.
http://www.hitachifoundation.org/yoshiyama/index.html
Questbridge: college prep for low-income high school juniors
Questbridge, a non-profit organization dedicated to giving high-achieving low-income students resources during the college application process, is accepting applications for its College Prep Program for high school juniors. Maximum award: full scholarship to summer program, college admissions counseling, and attendance at college preparatory conferences. Eligibility: qualified low-income high school juniors. Deadline: March 29, 2010.
http://www.questbridge.org/access/collegepreptext/
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
"We lack white participation in the racial conversation in this state, so we are trying to do something about it. When we talk about race relations, most of the time in Oregon, most white people are not at the table." -- Promise King, executive director of the Oregon League of Minority Voters, which is offering scholarships to white students to pursue courses in race relations.
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Education/2010/0209/Oregon-civil-rights-group-offers-scholarships-to-white-students
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