| Public Education Network Weekly NewsBlast
"Public Involvement. Public Education. Public Benefit."
March 5, 2010
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And the envelope, please...
Colorado, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Massachusetts, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, and Tennessee are the finalists in Round One of the competition for $4 billion in Race to the Top funds.
Read more: http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/campaign-k-12/2010/03/xx_states_are_named_race_to_th.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+CampaignK-12+%28Education+Week+Blog%3A+Politics+K-12%29
Central Falls: Bellwether?
Pressure from the Obama administration and the incentive of federal dollars may cause more wholesale firings like those at Central Falls High School in Rhode Island to occur across the country in the coming year, reports The Christian Science Monitor. Such moves will proliferate as "an increasing crop of no-excuses superintendents and state commissioners" take the view that "it's essential to clean house," according to Frederick Hess, director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute. The turnaround plan in Central Falls arose when negotiations between the district and local union over alternate approaches broke down. The five other worst schools in Rhode Island are in Providence, which faces a March 17 deadline to submit improvement proposals. While it's important to address the problem of persistently failing schools, after "the big dramatic gesture -- fire the teachers -- the next step is equally or more important," in the view of Jack Jennings, president of the Center on Education Policy. "Are better teachers going to be hired? Are kids going to learn more?" President Obama recently held up Central Falls as an example of the "accountability" needed to solve chronic underachievement in certain schools.
Read more: http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Education/2010/0225/All-teachers-fired-at-R.I.-school.-Will-that-happen-elsewhere
Related: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jQe6oVWR8RCYpv36bVIUomkB09NgD9E61RTO0
President unveils School Turnaround Grants
President Obama has proposed $900 million next year in new grants for school systems that commit to improving their struggling schools through turnaround programs, The Los Angeles Times reports. In an address to a coalition of education advocates at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the president said he wants states to use "last resort" strategies for their lowest-performing schools, which could translate into staff dismissals and closed campuses. To receive turnaround grants for their districts, state officials must draft a set of criteria to determine their lowest achievers. To be considered, a school must have state test scores in the bottom five percent or high school graduation rates below 60 percent. Once the Department of Education has approved the assessment criteria, schools can compete against other schools within their state for funds. Winners will be chosen by officials in each state based on the strength of respective turnaround plans. Although administration officials don't know which schools will get the money, they said many of those targeted are inner-city schools. There are about 25,000 public high schools in America, but fewer than one-tenth of them -- approximately 2,000 -- produce half the dropouts.
Read more: http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-na-obama-education2-2010mar02,0,6327243.story
A high-profile change of heart
In her latest book, education historian and former federal official Diane Ravitch renounces many of the market-oriented policies that she herself once promoted, according to The Washington Post. "In choosing his education agenda, President Obama sided with the economists and the corporate-style reformers," Ravitch writes in The Death and Life of the Great American School System, whose title echoes a seminal 1961 critique of urban planning by Jane Jacobs. Ravitch defends teacher unions, questions the value of standardized test data, and calls the president's support for independently operated charter schools "puzzling." She explains, "I wanted to believe that choice and accountability would produce great results. But over time, I was persuaded by accumulating evidence that the latest reforms were not likely to live up to their promise." She sharply criticizes No Child Left Behind, though The Post writes the initiative "is an easy target because it lost political luster years ago." Ravitch also faults major education philanthropies, including the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, for relying too heavily on business principles for school improvement. In large part because of her prominence and policy involvement, Ravitch's critique of the prevailing reform ideas in government, philanthropies, and think tanks "is reverberating in the world of education," The Post reports.
Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/25/AR2010022505543.html?wprss=rss_education&sid=ST2010022600526
Related: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/03/education/03ravitch.html?hpw
Related: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=124209100
Collaboration and support over pay
According to a massive new survey underwritten by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Scholastic, Inc., American teachers are more interested in school reform and student achievement than their paychecks, reports the Associated Press. The national poll, the largest of teachers ever completed, includes the opinions of teachers in every grade, in every state, and across every demographic, and was conducted to keep teachers' voices in the debate over education reform, according to the Gates Foundation's director, Vicki Phillips. Most teachers surveyed said they feel students in their states are doing okay in school, but believe fewer than 75 percent will graduate from high school ready to succeed in college and work. More value non-monetary rewards like collaboration time with other teachers and a supportive school leadership over higher salaries. Only 28 percent felt performance pay would have a strong impact, with 30 percent feeling it would have no impact at all. A majority of teachers said they would like to see tougher academic standards common to every state, despite the extra work these could create for them. Teachers are not opposed to standardized tests, despite union lobbying against them in states like Washington. But instead of yearly tests, teachers would prefer formative, ongoing assessments to help them understand how much their students are learning over time.
Read more: http://www.boston.com/news/education/k_12/articles/2010/03/02/more_than_40000_us_teachers_surveyed/?rss_id=Boston.com+--+Education+news
See the survey: http://www.scholastic.com/primarysources/download.asp
Positive feedback for D.C.'s IMPACT
Though far from perfect, teachers have told Jay Mathews of The Washington Post that D.C.'s new teacher evaluation system is the best they have ever participated in. IMPACT requires that each teacher be observed twice yearly by an outside evaluator called a "master educator," and three times by an administrator at his or her school. Five observations are more than most teachers in the District have ever experienced in a single year. Diana Suarez, a first grade teacher, praised IMPACT's post-observation conferences. "These conversations were positive, encouraging, and focused on practical solutions for me as a teacher," Suarez said. Alicia Hervey, a master educator in English, said the system "provides teachers with timely, specific feedback that they might use to make adjustments to their delivery of instruction." But George Parker, president of Washington Teacher's Union, criticized IMPACT as having no "appropriate system of support to improve instruction" and being "bad for kids." For his part, Mathews concedes the evaluation system could fail for many reasons, but "what happens to teachers who don't meet the standards will be crucial. Many smart people in the District like what they see so far. Columnists and union presidents, along with everyone else, ought to wait for results from the classroom before we make up our minds."
Read more: http://voices.washingtonpost.com/class-struggle/2010/02/dc_teacher_evaluation_looks_be.html
New York City as a case model for reform
As federal policymakers consider reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, they are looking to districts undergoing major reform to understand implications for supporting and encouraging these reforms at scale, especially at the high school level where need is urgent. The first in a series of policy briefs from the Alliance for Excellent Education looks at the efforts of New York City, a district it calls "extremely relevant" as the nation's largest and most diverse. New York is notable, the authors write, both for the breadth of the changes implemented and for preliminary indications of success in improving student outcomes. Most promising has been the increase by as much as 15 points of four-year graduation rates since 2002, following a decade of stagnation. The Bloomberg administration undertook several system-wide strategies that have affected all schools and students: bringing coherence to the system; shifting decision-making to the schools; developing and supporting effective teachers and leaders; and holding educators responsible for results. The district-wide changes were supplemented with two specific high school initiatives. First, the NYCDOE aggressively closed the lowest-performing high schools and replaced them with higher-quality options for students. Second, the NYCDOE created new targeted programs and schools to address the needs of over-age and under-credited high school-aged youth.
See the report: http://www.all4ed.org/publication_material/issue_policy_briefs
An opportunity lost in L.A.
Los Angeles school officials have lost a chance to test whether the charter movement can tackle the problems of the district's traditional (and often troubled) schools, according to The Los Angeles Times. The Board of Education denied proposals from three major charter organizations that had sought to run newly built neighborhood schools and would have included substantial numbers of limited-English speakers, special education students, foster children, and low-income families -- populations that charters are often criticized for not serving. The charters had agreed to operate by more inclusive rules in exchange for access to state-of-the-art, multimillion-dollar campuses. In the end, the board turned down all but four charter bids, opting instead for internal, teacher-led proposals. Though the district has struggled most with improving secondary education, no charter received a high school and only one will run a middle school on a campus shared with a separate, teacher-run school. The union fought hard to limit new charters, since each one would have effectively reduced its membership and potentially corresponded to more layoffs during the current district budget crisis. A growing nonunion charter workforce would also gradually reduce union clout, not only on pay and benefits issues but on matters of class size and the direction of future reforms.
Read more: http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-charter26-2010feb26,0,1231323.story
Bipartisan support spreads nationally for vouchers
The move in Florida to expand one of its voucher programs is "a subtle but significant sign that such programs, which have been anathema to many Democrats, are beginning to win bipartisan support in a number of states," according to Education Week. In Florida, favor is growing for new legislation that would increase the value of the state's tax-credit vouchers, which are funded by private corporations that, in exchange for their contributions, receive dollar-for-dollar tax credits. The legislation in Florida -- a state that has done more than any other to provide publicly funded vouchers to pay tuition at private schools -- comes as a similar measure has been introduced in Illinois, and as school choice advocates see what they deem promising signs in New Jersey. It's a remarkable political shift in Florida, writes Education Week, where few Democrats backed three separate voucher programs, including the tax-credit vouchers, when they were launched by then-Gov. Jeb Bush, a Republican. Florida's tax-credit vouchers are currently worth $3,950, and the program serves roughly 25,000 low-income students statewide. About 80 percent of the 1,000 or so schools that participate in the tax-credit voucher program are affiliated with a church or other religious organization.
Read more: http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2010/02/25/23voucher_ep.h29.html?tkn=LWBF5lesv%2FoXMf3lN7GO5F7CGMTLxln0kTtC&cmp=clp-ecseclips
Little guidance
A new report from Public Agenda, financed by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, suggests that high school counselors may be a "weak link in the chain needed to get more students into college," according to Inside Higher Ed. The findings are based on a national survey of 614 individuals aged 22 through 30 who had attended college (although not necessarily for long or long enough to earn a degree). Among the findings were that 48 percent had felt like "just another face in the crowd" in dealing with their guidance counselors. Sixty-seven percent said they would rank their counselors as fair or poor in helping them find an appropriate college. Sixty-two percent said that they would rank their counselors as fair or poor in helping them find ways to pay for college. While the report concedes that tight budgets have resulted in student-to-counselor ratios well beyond those recommended by experts, it also stresses its findings don't merely point to hurt feelings from those who didn't connect with their counselors. Rather, there appears to be a correlation between the degree to which students have a good counseling relationship and whether they make decisions that land them at the right institutions and with a plan to pay for college.
Read more: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/03/03/counselors
See the report: http://www.publicagenda.org/theirwholelivesaheadofthem?qt_active=1
Collaborating to drill down, child by child
Ten New Orleans charter schools have joined ranks to share data and test score results over the school year, with the goal of better gauging their strengths and weaknesses, The New Orleans Times-Picayune reports. The consortium will contract with the Achievement Network, an organization that presently works in Boston and Washington, D.C., to create a series of tests for schools to administer every six to eight weeks. A school can then analyze its results classroom by classroom, comparing its overall results with those of the other nine schools, allowing administrators to pinpoint areas of concern well before students take the state's standardized exams. "This allows you to drill down and look teacher by teacher and child by child," said Patty Glaser, director of curriculum and development at one charter. "It gives you time to make a difference for the kids." This collaboration represents one of the few cross-school collaborations in an "increasingly decentralized school landscape," according to The Times-Picayune, where nearly two-thirds of the public schools in New Orleans are charters. The Achievement Network hopes to expand its work in New Orleans, adding more schools each year.
Read more: http://www.nola.com/education/index.ssf/2010/03/new_orleans_charter_schools_fo.html
BRIEFLY NOTED
The driving force behind the Central Falls decision
Rhode Island Education Commissioner Deborah A. Gist, who approved the firings at Central Falls High School, has said she will "do whatever it takes to create better schools."
http://www.projo.com/news/content/central_falls_turmoil_02-28-10_TQHGS9N_v292.38b0e26.html
Scrappy ed fight in Jersey
The powerful state's teacher union is "fighting back -- hard" against perceived attacks by Gov. Chris Christie.
http://www.northjersey.com/news/85754237_The_NJEA_vs__Governor_Christie__two_powerhouses_doing__battle.html
Nearly two-thirds of Denver schools sub-standard
About 57 percent of Denver Public Schools' 75,000 students attend schools that fail to meet district performance standards, according to a study by a charter school organization.
http://www.denverpost.com/education/ci_14485500#ixzz0h2EnC1q9
An end to creative accounting in Alabama
A new way to calculate graduation rates that will be used by all 50 states as of 2012 will reduce the graduation rate reported by the Alabama Department of Education by 20 percent.
http://blog.al.com/spotnews/2010/02/post_484.html
IEPs for everyone
This year, all 428 sixth graders at Linwood Middle School in North Brunswick, N.J., are charting their own academic path with personalized student learning plans -- electronic portfolios containing information about their learning styles, interests, skills, career goals, and extracurricular activities.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/01/education/01schools.html?hpw
GRANTS AND FUNDING OPPORTUNITIES
NCSS: Grant for Geographic Literacy
The National Council for the Social Studies Grant for Geographic Literacy is awarded in order to promote geography education in schools; to enhance the geographic literacy of students at the classroom, district, or statewide level; and to encourage the integration of geography into the social studies curriculum/classroom. Maximum award: $2,500. Eligibility: programs -- not individuals, individual lessons, or units -- that will enhance the geographic literacy of students at the classroom, district, or statewide levels. Recipients may be individuals or groups in school districts, public institutions, or universities. Deadline: March 21, 2010.
http://www.socialstudies.org/awards/geographiclit/
SolidWorks: STEM Educators Grant
The SolidWorks STEM Educators Grant will award SolidWorks Student Edition CAD software to individual U.S. educators in an initiative aimed at improving students' math skills and their interest in technology-related careers. The grant includes training and lesson plans to help teachers and faculty from middle school through college integrate the four separate disciplines of science, technology, engineering, and math for more effective education. Maximum award: SolidWorks Student Edition CAD software, plus training and lesson plans. Eligibility: middle school teachers grades 6-8; high school teachers; community college professors; university and college professors. Deadline: April 1, 2010.
http://www.solidworks.com/pages/products/edu/RoboticsEducatorsGrant.html
Entertainment Software Association: Grants for Youth Programs
The ESA Foundation is dedicated to supporting geographically diverse projects and programs that benefit American youth of all races and denominations to make a difference in the quality of their life, health, and welfare. The foundation seeks to harness the collective power of the interactive entertainment industry to create positive social impact in our communities. Maximum award: varies. Eligibility: 501(c)(3) organizations with programs that serve youths ages 7-18. Deadline: April 15, 2010.
http://www.theesa.com/foundation/application.asp
American Honda Foundation: Grants for Youth Science Education
The American Honda Foundation makes grants to K-12 schools, colleges, universities, trade schools, and other youth-focused nonprofit organizations for programs that benefit youth and scientific education. Maximum award: $60,000. Eligibility: schools and youth-focused nonprofit organizations. Deadline: May 1, 2010.
http://corporate.honda.com/america/philanthropy.aspx?id=ahf
Dominion Foundation: Education Partnerships
The Dominion Foundation is currently accepting applications for Education Partnership grants to encourage the development of new programs to strengthen math and science education in kindergarten through grade 12. Maximum award: $10,000. Eligibility: accredited public and private elementary and secondary schools and public school divisions in North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia, and Virginia. Deadline: May 1, 2010.
http://www.dom.com/about/education/grants/index.jsp
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
"Your plan is wrong. It's wayward. It will make things worse and you know it. Data doesn't support it. Morality doesn't support it."
-- Rev. William Barber, president of North Carolina's NAACP, on Wake County's abandonment of its economically-based diversity policy.
http://www.newsobserver.com/2010/03/03/367017/wake-ends-diversity-policy-in.html
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