EDUCATION REFORM MEETS THE GATEKEEPERS OF MEDIOCRITY
Since Congress passed the No Child Left Behind Act, there has been a movement to repeal it, writes Lynne Varner. Federal education reform challenges local control of schools. In her view, NCLB offers stinging rebukes to educational complacency. Its expectations are strong and unbending, its consequences admittedly harsh. Parents have been given a powerful bargaining chip; the ability to transfer from a failing school at a local district's expense. This challenges two sacred cows at once. The first is the widespread acceptance of perennially failing schools because, well, our own children don't go there. The second challenge goes to the often arrogant manner of educators who ignore parents seen as having few alternatives. Now it is not only the affluent parents who can wield the threat of exiting a school. The law isn't just a sharp arrow aimed at failing urban schools. It also strikes deep into the heart of the suburbs, where schools with plenty of resources produce high achievers and receive much acclaim. The secret NCLB will uncover about these schools is their neglect of so-called average and underachieving students. NCLB doesn't begin to pay for all that it aims to do. But the funding argument is a Trojan horse hiding the real battle. More federal money is being directed to local schools but its form, block grants, challenges the status quo. The federal law's biggest challenge is shedding its rigidity while retaining its unwavering push for accountability. Read article on seattletimes.com

EDUCATORS: MINORITY STUDENTS DEPRIVED OPPORTUNITY
As No Child Left Behind pushes test scores to the fore of schools' consciousness, educators and policy-makers are increasingly focused on the achievement gap between African American and Latino students and their white and Asian peers. But how, exactly, is that gap defined? Test scores are one indicator. But many educational experts caution against making them the sole measure, reports Jocelyn Weiner. Graduation and attendance rates, postsecondary education success, classwork rigor, teacher quality, discipline and dropout rates, SAT scores and special education placements all are seen as key factors in understanding the gap. Educators say a shift in vision is needed to address what they say are the unequal opportunities at the heart of the achievement gap. "The issue is really changing the belief system of low expectations," said Russlynn Ali. "We use poor test results to justify the low expectations we had in the first place. …We take kids that have less to begin with and we provide them with less of everything we know matters most in education and we wonder why we have a student achievement gap." Read article on sacbee.com

THOUSANDS RALLY FOR SCHOOL FUNDING
Several thousand parents, students, teachers, and other school employees rallied this week at the Minnesota State Capitol, calling for more education funding from the state. It was probably the largest education rally at the Capitol in recent years, and it drew more than 175 busloads of participants. The crowd, many of whom had to stand in the snow, chanted "No More Excuses!" and "Fund Our Schools!" when prompted by rally speakers. The rally came at a time when the debate over school funding is shifting into high gear at the Legislature, reports Norman Draper. Since this is a budget year, the Legislature and Gov. Tim Pawlenty will decide how much state money schools get for the next two years. Everybody wants schools to get increased funding this year, it's just a matter of how much and where it will come from that's creating the differences. The editors of the Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune recently published an editorial entitled, "Funding public education adequately is a moral and civic duty." Read article on startrbune.com

PARENTS ARE GOING BEYOND BAKE SALES TO HELP SUPPORT PUBLIC EDUCATION
More money is needed to fund education on both the state and local levels. With federal, state and municipal budgets squeezed to the brink -- and with equally strapped taxpayers unwilling to override local revenue limits to help schools meet their operating expenses -- parents and education advocates are increasingly taking matters into their own hands. "The change has occurred over the last two years, ever since the stock market and the high-tech industry went bust, and the states found themselves in tremendous shortfalls," says Arnold Fege, director of public engagement for the Public Education Network. Overall, states have cut their budgets by about $65 billion, and Fege estimates that of that total, between $18 billion and $20 billion represent cuts in education. "Almost every public school district in the country is affected in some way," he says. The result is that where parents were once raising money for the "extras," they are now fund raising for the basics. In some cases, parents are being asked for the first time to pay fees for school-bus transportation, after-school programs and school bands. In Oldham County, Ky., reports Judy Molland, high-school students even pay a $4 rental fee per textbook! While education advocates applaud the dedication and commitment of so many parents, they are also concerned about the level of fund raising today. "Having parents raise money to accomplish their goals is a great activity, but it’s not the role of the PTA to take over in this area because the state isn't doing its job," cautions David Cullen, director of legislation for the Florida state PTA. He worries that the more parents bear the burden of paying for public education, the less obligated policy-makers will feel to appropriate money for public schools.
Read article on parenthoodweb.com

THE WEIGHT OF INEQUALITY & THE WAIT FOR EQUITY
The fairest way to decide how much money a school receives is to allocate funds on a weighted per pupil basis, and then along with the money, provide the decision making power so that the principal in partnership with the local school council can determine each schools’ needs. The Cross City Campaign for Urban School Reform, writes Diana Nelson, has learned three important lessons from studying how districts across North American provide resources to their schools: 1) Funding should be based on student need; 2) People closest to the students are in the best position to decide how to use those funds to support school improvement efforts; and 3) central office services should be market driven. If the Chicago Public Schools were to adopt a weighted per pupil allocation system, and devolve the authority to the schools for purchasing decisions, central office departments would be placed in competition with external vendors. Principals could purchase services from either the central office OR elsewhere. Two enormous bonuses occur -- according to the districts that have done this. First of all, the district central office shrinks because if no one is buying their services, they go out of business: it’s the American way. And/or the central office really shapes up, becoming more effective and more efficient in order to compete in this brave new world of choice.
Read article on crosscity.org

OLDER KIDS AVOID PEANUT BUTTER SANDWICHES
By the time they enter high school, students begin to show many signs of maturity. Cutting back on an old childhood standard, the peanut butter sandwich, is a newfound sign uncovered by a University of Georgia survey of school-age children. "Surprisingly, we found that middle school students are more likely to eat peanut butter sandwiches and tend to consume them more frequently than elementary school students," said Stanley Fletcher, an agricultural economist with the UGA College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences. "And high school students avoid them." Fletcher doesn't know why high school students turn away from peanut butter sandwiches. "It could be that high school students, in a transition period from teenagers to adults, begin to adopt the dietary style of adults," he said. "They start cutting back on candy and on peanut butter, too." The UGA study found that economic status also influences how many peanut butter sandwiches Georgia students eat. Students from counties of higher per capita income were found to eat fewer sandwiches and eat them less often. Of the students surveyed, 82 percent eat school-prepared lunches. Of those, the study found that 41 percent like the taste of school-prepared peanut butter sandwiches. The survey showed that students who buy school lunches eat fewer peanut butter sandwiches than those who bring lunches from home. "School lunches usually offer more choices than home-prepared lunches," Fletcher said. "But the students who like the taste of school-prepared peanut butter sandwiches were found to eat them more often."
Read article on uga.edu

BERKELEY TEACHERS REFUSE TO GIVE HOMEWORK
Students in the Berkeley school district aren't getting written homework assignments because teachers are refusing to grade work on their own time after two years without a pay raise. So far, a black history event had to be canceled and parents had to staff a middle-school science fair because teachers are sticking strictly to the hours they're contracted to work. "Teachers do a lot with a little. All of a sudden, a lot of things that they do are just gone. It's demoralizing," said Rachel Baker, who has a son in kindergarten. Teachers say they don't want to stop volunteering their time. "It's hard," said Judith Bodenhauser, a high school math teacher. "I have stacks of papers I haven't graded. Parents want to talk to me; I don't call them back." The action was organized by the Berkeley Federation of Teachers, which wants a cost-of-living increase next year. District Superintendent Michele Lawrence expressed sympathy for the teachers but said there isn't money for raises. She blamed Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger for not providing as much money to education as promised. Read article on cnn.com

CHARTERS USE TEACHERS NOT FULLY CERTIFIED
The odds of getting a fully certified teacher in an Ohio charter school are about the same as winning a coin flip. About 45 percent of the teachers in the state's nearly 250 charter schools lack full state certification, according to Ohio Department of Education figures. Many of those teachers instead hold long-term substitute credentials, state records show. That's a sharp contrast to traditional public schools, where nearly 98 percent of classroom teachers in core subjects are fully certified. The reason for the certification gap: A loophole in the federal No Child Left Behind law allows teachers in charter schools to be held to a different standard from their colleagues in traditional public schools. And in Ohio, that standard does not include full certification. "Something needs to be done about that," said State Board of Education member Sam Schloemer of Cincinnati. "The intention of charter schools was to offer an alternative to regular public schools, not something less." Researchers agree that having a qualified teacher is crucial to a student's success, reports Scott Stephens. Research also shows that giving poor and minority children qualified teachers dramatically closes the achievement gap between them and their more affluent peers. But researchers don't always agree on what makes a teacher "highly qualified," especially in charter schools designed to provide alternative ways to teach and learn.
Read article on cleveland.com

TEACHER-TO-TEACHER INITIATIVE
We know that children can learn. Many teachers are getting impressive results and eliminating the achievement gap in schools and classrooms across the country. Research confirms that teachers are the single most important factor in raising student achievement. Students arrive in the classroom with many different backgrounds and experiences, each bringing its own set of opportunities and challenges. Highly qualified teachers can maximize every child's potential to meet high academic standards. Teachers are key to fulfilling the promise of No Child Left Behind. The U.S Department of Education has a whole set of new activities to support quality teachers, including lesson plans, online videos, free summer workshops and a host of e-learning opportunities on how to improve student performance.
Read article on ed.gov

USING EVIDENCE TO IMPROVE EDUCATION
Among the many buzzwords swarming around education reform, "evidence-based practice" has become one of the hottest. Spurred in part by No Child Left Behind -- with its more than one hundred references to research and evidence -- and, in part, by efforts by the business community and others to help infuse educational decisions with data, schools and school systems are quickly lining up to demonstrate how their curricular and spending decisions reflect evidence about what works and what's needed. To a great extent, this trend is a positive one, writes Robert Rothman. Educators will admit that many decisions have been based more on history (the way schools have always worked) and on politics (the wishes of a favored constituency) than on evidence. And with budgets tight, administrators are eager to show that schools are producing results. Yet, like many concepts, "evidence-based practice" can mean many different things, and the way it is interpreted and applied can determine whether it represents a real change in the way schools operate or just another fad. The notion of evidence-based practice implied in No Child Left Behind is a limited one. The law is producing reams of data, but nearly all of it is standardized-test data that cannot sufficiently inform decisions about programs and practices. While it is useful to know whether certain groups of students are performing less well than others in mathematics, it is also important to know what the classrooms are teaching so that schools can know what to change. In addition, the law's emphasis on knowing "what works" is based on a limited model of research that assumes that a program that works in one school will work in any school. The type of randomized trials the law holds up as the "gold standard" for education research, similar to the kind of studies used in medical research, say little about how to implement an innovation. The latest issue of Voices in Urban Education, from the Annenberg Institute for School Reform, focuses on evidence-based practice. It provides four perspectives on the use of evidence to improve education at the district and state levels and offers provocative ideas about what counts as evidence and ways evidence can inform practice. Read article on annberginstitute.org

ARE YOU A PROBLEM PARENT, TAKE THIS QUIZ
Schools may be too polite to tell you, but we're not. Knowing what really drives people crazy is the first step in building a better relationship, writes Bryan Taylor. Here’s what teachers and principals have told us behind closed doors. There’s a bit of each of these characters in all of us. Rate yourself to find which is your temptation -- or compare with your partner to start a fun conversation! Then try an antidote to get more from your child’s school without burning bridges. Click below to find out if you are: Forgetful Fred; Behind Your Back Brenda; Busy Bea; In-Denial Deirdra ;Demanding Dan; or AWOL Alice. Read article on partnershipforlearning.org

IS IT ETHICAL FOR TEACHERS TO REFUSE TO TEACH IN HIGH-POVERTY SCHOOLS?
There's an ethical debate coming your way. It's based on the following facts: (1) Better teaching causes more learning; (2) Experienced teachers are usually better than inexperienced teachers; (3) The gap in student achievement explained by race and class is large; (4) Leaders across the political spectrum, including teacher union leaders, agree that this gap is unacceptable and must be reduced; (5) Districts have had limited success using incentives to convince their best teachers to teach in high-poverty schools; (6) seniority provisions in union contracts generally forbid districts from assigning experienced teachers to high-poverty schools; and (7) Some districts now want to require their best teachers to teach in high-poverty schools. Rob McMahon and Doug Tuthill reviewed these facts with some key union and district leaders, and then asked this question: Is it ethical for teachers to refuse to teach in high-poverty schools? The authors integrated their responses into a fictional exchange between a local union president and a district superintendent. Read article on teacherleaders.org

CHARTER SCHOOLS: NEW CHALLENGES TO THE SEPARATION OF CHURCH & STATE?
Religion in the public schools has always been a contentious issue. Federal and state Constitutions originally trumped debates over religion in public schools by strictly forbidding its promotion. Paradoxically, the facilities and resources of traditional public schools can be used for religious purposes unrelated to school activities. Now, charter schools may challenge traditional agreements relied on to separate church from state. J. Shelton Baxter examines this issue by looking at charter school law in the state of California. California law explicitly prohibits state charter schools from supporting religion in any form, which may lead to legal challenges. Some charter school supporters have argued that increased autonomy should mean charter schools are free to follow any mission, even those of a religious nature. Anecdotal evidence suggests that many charter schools are founded by faith-based homeschoolers, located in religious buildings and aided financially by religious connections. Baxter finds that California’s charter school law can be challenged on two fronts. First, the current exclusion of religion in all forms, even the use of facilities and resources by outside religious organizations, is inconsistent with accepted public school actions. Second, California law may conflict with previous Federal judicial decisions. The solution may be to make charter school regulations mirror those of traditional public schools. Whether this would stifle the innovation that drives the popularity of charter reform remains unknown.
Read article on ncspe.org

HYBRID SCHOOLS BLEND HOMESCHOOLING & PRIVATE EDUCATION
On Tuesdays and Thursdays, children file into the tiny classrooms at Victory Academy, where teachers lead lessons in math, reading and foreign languages. However, on Mondays and Wednesdays, reports Patti Ghezzi, those classrooms are empty. The school's 48 students are taught at home. Victory Academy, a Catholic school in Mableton, is one of at least a half-dozen schools in metro Atlanta blending home schooling and private education. Several more such schools are in the planning stages. Kids and parents say the arrangement affords them the best of home schooling and a more structured school. Georgia's home schooled population has doubled since 1996. Last year, more than 34,000 children were taught at home -- about 2 percent of the state's student population. That figure doesn't include home schooled students whose parents don't register with the local school board. It's unclear how many home schooled students are attending some sort of school part time. For some parents who don't like public schools, "hybrid" schools like Victory offer a more affordable alternative than traditional private academies. Because Victory is open only two days a week, tuition ranges from $1,700 to $3,400 a year, less than half the cost of most private schools. On Fridays, children can participate in an optional arts program. Organizers believe the "hybrid" concept could open up home schooling to many families who want to try it but are intimidated by the prospect of developing lesson plans for each child and covering everything a child needs to know. Pam Palmer, a home schooling mother of five, needed help with her children's high school courses, especially lab sciences. "I don't want a fetal pig on my kitchen table," she said. Read article on ajc.com

STATES REQUIRING GRADUATION EXAMS PERFORM POORLY
A study examining the effects of 'high stakes' graduation tests on SAT and graduation rates finds that states that require such tests had lower graduation rates and lower SAT scores than other states. The impact of high stakes tests on students' motivation to stay in school and on the teaching of critical thinking skills are discussed in the study. Read article on forumforeducation.org

GRANT AND FUNDING INFORMATION

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

"All schools for miles and miles around Must take a special test, To see who's learning such and such -- To see which school's the best. If our small school does not do well, Then it will be torn down, And you will have to go to school In dreary Flobbertown." -Jack Prelutsky (poet) http://www.thenotebook.org/editions/2004/winter/diffendoofer.htm ingarten (journalist), "None of the Above" from The Washington Post Magazine, October 21, 2004

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