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August 26, 2011 |
Click here to read printable version |
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***Join us for Public Education Network's National Conference which will take place November 6 - 8, 2011 in Washington, D.C. at the Fairmont Hotel. The conference theme is New American Revolution: College and Career Readiness for All. To register and for additional information please visit our website at http://publiceducation.org/annualconference. We look forward to seeing you this fall.*** |
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| Part of the problem, or part of the solution?< |
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In an article in The American Prospect that uses impoverished Camden, N.J. as its example, Sarah Garland examines the argument that fixing failing public schools is the best way to revive high-poverty cities and neighborhoods. New Jersey Governor Chris Christie has rolled out a slate of proposals including merit pay for teachers, stricter tenure rules, and more efficient means of removing ineffective teachers from the classroom, all meant to resuscitate failing schools and with them, failing communities. At the heart of Christie's philosophy, shared by reformers like Joel Klein and Michelle Rhee, is the conviction that poverty has been used as an excuse by unions and districts to avoid the hard work of true reform. Yet in Camden, Garland finds even great teachers face obstacles difficult to overcome: "It's hard for schools to hold the line against a city that has crumbled into rubble and violence around them." A recent study by John Fantuzzo of the University of Pennsylvania suggests that even for kids who don't suffer homelessness or abuse, being surrounded by kids who do can hurt their achievement. Moreover, the focus on schools as saviors of communities has largely quashed discussions about large-scale anti-poverty policies. If schools were to coordinate with hospitals and doctors, government agencies dealing with homelessness and child abuse, and nongovernmental groups that provide counseling, after-school programs, and other services, perhaps we could craft more comprehensive and effective interventions.
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| One in five |
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A national study on child wellbeing from the Annie E. Casey Foundation finds that child poverty increased in 38 states from 2000 to 2009, according to the Associated Press. Nearly 15 million children -- 20 percent of the child population -- were poor in 2009, a 2.5 million increase from 2000. Researchers found Nevada to have the highest rate of children with unemployed and underemployed parents. The state also has the most children affected by foreclosures -- 13 percent of all Nevadan babies, toddlers, school-aged kids, and teenagers have been evicted due to unpaid mortgages. In the two decades since researchers began compiling the annual report, infant mortalities, child and teen deaths, and high school dropout rates have declined, but the number of unhealthy babies has increased, and far more children live in low-income families. Programs such as food stamps, unemployment insurance, and foreclosure meditation have been "a dam against the flood of poverty," but that assistance is threatened by federal and state budget cuts. Mississippi has the most children living in poverty, 31 percent; New Hampshire had the fewest at 11 percent. The federal poverty level this year is $22,350 a year for a family of four.
Read more | Related | Related | Back to top
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| Changing tides |
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Michele Bachmann's victory in the Iowa straw poll represents many things, writes Dana Goldstein in Slate Magazine, among these a "sea change" in the Republican education agenda. The standards-and-accountability movement has been superceded by the anti-government, Christian-right view of education, in which public schools are not engines for economic growth but potential corrupters of the nation's youth. As Bachmann's political career has advanced, her education activism has centered on the idea that government attempts to improve schools threaten the prerogatives of the Christian family and represent a dangerous move toward a socialized, planned economy. The Tea Party has carried this ideology to national prominence, "parent's rights" a natural fit for those seeking to drastically shrink government's size. Veteran Republicans, including one-time moderates John Kline, John Boehner, Mike Pence, and Cathy McMorris Rodgers, are distancing themselves from NCLB and promoting tax credits for homeschooling parents. Goldstein writes it will be interesting to see how Mitt Romney handles this, since his centrism on school reform is public record, and he has recently fallen quiet on the issue. But with his party's congressional leaders rushing to the right on school reform, Romney must either defend his record of support or perform another obvious flip-flop in his quest to woo the conservative base.
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| Mapping excellence |
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If you rely on media coverage or briefs from the U.S. Department of Education for information on public schools, you might think the country is overrun by dropout factories and failing schools, most of which need dramatic turnarounds or takeovers, writes Sean Slade of ASCD in a guest piece on the Answer Sheet blog in The Washington Post. Yet so-called "pockets of excellence" in public education are not anomalies; they exist in every state, region, and "pocket" nationwide. ASCD has launched an interactive map that showcases outstanding schools around the country, providing stories of schools, districts, and communities that emphasize the needs of the whole child, actively working toward making school environments more welcoming, inclusive, and safe. These schools and districts have expanded education beyond academics. The map should serve as a counterargument to the idea that all schools are in crisis and in need of a complete overhaul. There are untold stories and successes out there, Slade writes. "So next time you hear a conversation about the plight of our schools," says Slade, "tell them about what's happening in your state or your district or your neighborhood -- right around the corner."
Read more | See the map | Back to top
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| Of denials and deniers |
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In an op-ed for Reuters, Stephen Brill states that, having read all the white papers and commission reports on public education and spent time with the major figures in reform, his take on "whether we need to throw out a system in which we allow unaccountable, unmeasured civil servants to produce failure" still seems "as uncomplicated as it did when I saw my first Rubber Roomer with his head resting on a card table." In response, Diane Ravitch writes for Reuters that the reform movement Brill champions is "already failing" and its remedies don't work. "It ignores poverty," in Ravitch's view, "which is the root cause of poor academic performance." Deborah Meier responds for Reuters that "we who have labored in education before Brill have long been adamant that our schools are not doing the job our society needs. It's too bad he has little interest in the work the 'deniers' have already put in as the original reformers." But Joel Klein responds to Brill in Reuters by agreeing that "the tectonic plates are shifting": "As Brill's outstanding reporting shows, the reformers are gaining ground while the 'school-reform deniers' are increasingly having to speak in the language of reform."
Read Brill |
Read Ravitch |
Read Meier |
Read Klein | Back to top
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| Curiouser and curiouser |
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Why won't Michelle Rhee talk to USA TODAY? asks Michael Winerip in The New York Times. As "voracious" as Rhee seems for the media spotlight, she has consistently refused to speak to the newspaper about cheating allegations in D.C. schools under her tenure. After three USA TODAY reporters -- Marisol Bello, Jack Gillum, and Greg Toppo -- broke a story about suspiciously high test-score gains at 41 Washington schools while Rhee was chancellor, the reporters say they made numerous attempts to interview Rhee, directly and through her public relations representatives. "She said she wasn't going to talk with us," Bello recalls. "Her understanding was we were writing about [district schools] and she is no longer chancellor." The district's inspector general has started an inquiry into the matter, with one investigator assigned. The federal Department of Education is also assisting, with two investigators spending five days at eight schools. By comparison in Atlanta, site of another cheating scandal, Georgia deployed 60 investigators for 10 months at 56 schools and produced a report that named 178 people, 82 who confessed. As Winerip points out, people in Atlanta could go to prison. Rhee still won't talk to investigative reporters. Why?
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| Heads, we lose; tails, Shanghai wins |
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An article on the Education Next website discussing a paper of the same topic examines the proficiency of U.S. students from a global perspective, with a special emphasis on mathematics. In particular, the paper translates state-by-state National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) scores, as well as demographic subgroup NAEP scores, into Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) scores to determine how states and subgroups stack up on an international basis. The study also turns the question around, translating PISA scores into NAEP scores, to determine whether other countries seem able to lift a higher percentage of their students to or above the NAEP proficiency bar. Using these metrics, U.S. students in the Class of 2011, with a 32 percent proficiency rate, came in 32nd among the 65 nations that participated in PISA. Shanghai topped the list with a 75 percent math proficiency rate, well over twice the 32 percent rate of the United States. Since Shanghai students are from a prosperous metropolitan area within China, their performance is more appropriately compared to Massachusetts and Minnesota, so researchers compared these data and still found Shanghai performs "at a distinctly higher level." The U.S. proficiency rate in reading, at 31 percent, is 17th among the PISA-taking nations of the world. In reading, Shanghai 8th-graders still outperform those in Massachusetts, with 56 percent proficient versus 43 percent. The study also compared performance of various American subgroups at an international level, finding that our highest-performing demographic groups still trail well behind all students in Korea, Japan, Finland, Germany, Belgium, and Canada.
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| Less is less |
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In an op-ed in The New York Times, Luis A. Ubiņas and Chris Gabrieli write that "for all the talk about balancing the budget for the sake of our children, keeping classrooms closed is a perverse way of giving them a brighter future." Ubiņas and Gabrieli argue for more time in classrooms, not less. According to the authors, research suggests that one of the strongest indicators of scholastic achievement is actual time devoted to learning. Schools must therefore move toward longer days and years, ideally increasing learning time by 30 percent. This would mean more individualized support; better-rounded education in a broader array of subjects, from science and foreign languages to arts and robotics; and less unsupervised after-school and summer time. The good news, the authors write, is that more than 1,000 schools in the States are now using expanded schedules. Perhaps most surprising, some schools have shown these changes can be made without spending more money. Yet this is not enough. "We really need a more comprehensive national effort to make expanded learning time the norm in American education, especially for our neediest students, through smarter use of local, state and federal resources," the authors write. "More hours of learning -- not fewer -- can make a world of difference."
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| Transformation pains |
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The U.S. Department of Education has invited states and schools using the most popular (and least rigorous) of four school improvement models -- the "transformational model" -- to apply for extra time to devise teacher evaluations, reports Alyson Klein in Education Week. The transformational model doesn't call for staff removal, but instead requires extensive professional development for teachers, a new school governing authority, and extended learning time. Transformation schools also must create new teacher evaluation systems taking student performance into account for hiring, firing, promotion, and retention decisions. Since many schools and districts are considering these types of evaluations for the first time, in some cases having to implement new collective bargaining agreements, creating them hasn't been easy. Now, states can apply for a waiver to give the first round of SIG schools (those that started in the 2010-11 year) more time. Schools can develop the evaluation systems this school year, then pilot them next year. Schools that start implementing transformation this year (the 2011-12 school year) also must develop their systems this year, pilot them next year, and have them up and running by the 2013-14 school year. So far, just Utah has applied for a waiver.
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Has he made himself clear?
Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has said unequivocally that states need not participate in Common Core in order to qualify for one of the department's to-be-determined NCLB waivers.
http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/campaign-k-12/2011/08/duncan_states_dont_need_to_joi.html
You be the judge
Annual allegations of test-tampering and grade-changing by educators have more than tripled since Mayor Michael Bloomberg took control of New York City's school system.
http://tinyurl.com/3r3up65
Out with the public funds...
California has lost $11.5 million of its federal funding for new charter schools. Officials at the U.S. Department of Education warned that the state did not meet requirements of the Charter Schools Program, which funds two- and three-year grants for new charter schools.
http://www.sacbee.com/2011/08/19/3847664/california-loses-115-million-in.html#ixzz1Vrwz5Htt
...and in with the private
The California Charter Schools Association has received a $15-million grant from the Walton Family Foundation to add 20,000 more charter school students in Los Angeles and 100,000 statewide.
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-charters-20110823,0,4517250.story
Change up
Arlene C. Ackerman is no longer superintendent of the Philadelphia Public Schools.
http://tinyurl.com/3l7r6hc
NOLA East
The District of Columbia now has the "most robust charter sector" of any big city outside New Orleans.
TinyURL.com/3nzj5he
Seriously?
Under pressure from the American Chemistry Council, a lobbying group for the plastics industry, schools officials in California edited a new environmental curriculum to include positive messages about plastic shopping bags, interviews and documents show.
http://www.sacbee.com/2011/08/19/3847824/plastic-bag-lobby-wins-favorable.html#ixzz1Vrzltmwo
Hard times at NYC DOE
Nearly 780 employees of the New York City Education Department will lose their jobs by October, in the largest layoff at a single agency since Mayor Michael Bloomberg took office in 2002.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/24/education/24excess.html?src=recg
The hassles mount
The American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey on Tuesday filed a lawsuit against Newark for refusing to release records related to a $100 million gift pledged to its schools by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.
http://www.npr.org/2011/08/23/139895784/parents-aclu-sue-n-j-city-over-facebook-records?ft=1&f=1013
Misinterpretation
A judge has ruled that the New York State Board of Regents overreached in its interpretation of a new law on teacher evaluations, offering a victory to the state teachers' union.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/25/education/25teacher.html?partner=rss&emc=rss |
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| NEW GRANT AND FUNDING INFORMATION |
Toshiba America Foundation: Grants for Science and Math Education
Toshiba America Foundation Grants aim to contribute to the quality of science and mathematics education in U.S. communities by investing in projects designed by classroom teachers to improve science and mathematics education. Maximum award: $1,000. Eligibility: teachers K-12. Deadline: October 1, 2011.
http://www.toshiba.com/taf/k5.jsp
Lowe's Toolbox for Education
Lowe's Toolbox for Education grants fund school improvement projects initiated by parents in recognition of the importance of parental involvement in education. Maximum award: $5,000. Eligibility: K-12 schools (including charter, parochial, private, etc.) or parent groups (associated with a non-profit K-12 school). Deadline: October 14, 2011.
http://toolboxforeducation.com/
American School Board/ Sodexo: Magna Awards
The American School Board/ Sodexo Magna Awards honor outstanding programs developed or supported by school boards that showcase school district leadership, creativity, and commitment to student achievement. Maximum award: $4,000. Eligibility: local school boards. Deadline: October 31, 2011.
http://www.asbj.com/magna/
For more grants, see http://www.publiceducation.org/newsblast_grants.asp
Andrew Rotherham: All else equal, should we expect more of schools?
Arne Duncan: We should expect more of society.
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2090299,00.html#ixzz1W3vysZ9Z
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