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July 23, 2010 |
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| 57 percent and counting |
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Less than two months after the nation's governors and state school chiefs released recommendations for national education standards, 28 states and the District of Columbia have adopted them, The New York Times reports. Swift adoption of the standards, which dictate what students should learn in English and math from kindergarten through high school, has surprised observers, given a long tradition of state control over curriculum. The federal Race to the Top competition is one explanation; states adopting core standards by August 2 win points toward the $3.4 billion still to be distributed. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan declared himself "ecstatic" at the participation rate: "[National standards have] been the third rail of education, and the fact that you're now seeing half the nation decide that it's the right thing to do is a game-changer." However, Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers and a supporter of the standards, worries that the rush could backfire if states lack funding. "I'm already watching the ravages of the recession cutting the muscle out of efforts to implement standards," Weingarten said. "If states adopt these thoughtful new standards and don't implement them, teachers won't know how to meet them, yet they'll be the basis on which kids are judged."
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| An era ends, but not quietly |
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The recent arrest of 19 protesters at a Wake County, N.C. school board meeting brings the issue of busing and diversity in education back into the national spotlight, according to CNN. The North Carolina State Conference of the NAACP and local African Methodist Episcopal Zion Churches held a mass mobilization on July 20 in Raleigh to protest the recent decision by the Wake County Board of Education to end a 10-year-old socioeconomic diversity plan for its public schools. The board voted 5-4 on March 23 to end "forced busing," initiated in the 1970s to promote diversity. Following a 1999 ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals that another district in the state had achieved sufficient racial integration (therefore no longer requiring race-based busing), Wake County moved to a socioeconomic diversity program. Some students traveled an hour to school, and suburban students were bused to the "inner-city." The new plan has students attend schools in their communities, leaving black students in underachieving schools and white students in higher quality schools, according to Mark Dorosin of the University of North Carolina's Center for Civil Rights. The Wake County Public School System, which includes Raleigh, is the 18th largest school district in the nation.
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| What's at play when we overlook mediocre scores in middle-class schools? |
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In a post on the Thomas B. Fordham Institute's Flypaper blog, Mike Petrilli ponders the findings of a recent study from the Institute of Education Sciences on charter schools, which found that charters serving poor or low-performing kids generally had a significant positive impact on math achievement, while those serving better-off students had a negative effect on both math and reading. One could joke, writes Petrilli, that "this is evidence that charters are closing the achievement gap: They are helping low-performing poor kids make gains, and affluent kids lose ground." But what do these results actually signify? Petrilli reasons that unlike their urban counterparts, these largely suburban charters achieve excellent results in terms of student success in college and beyond, but aren't focused on helping students pass state standardized tests. In comparison, student scores suffer, leading to a paradox in Petrilli's view. "Show me a high-poverty charter school serving lots of poor and minority kids, and if its test scores don't match the neighboring public school I'd say, 'shut it down!' Sure, it might be safer than the alternative, or more engaging, or better at developing a sense of belonging, or strong values, or well-being. But if its kids are learning less math and reading than the crappy public school down the street? Lock the doors!"
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| It hasn't failed; it's rarely been tried |
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Let's not dismiss small high schools out of hand, writes Thomas Toch in an article for The Washington Monthly. The significant investment by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (to name one prominent initiative) yielded few student achievement results due to design and execution of ideas. "It would be a mistake to think it's not valuable to address the failed cultures of large, traditional high schools simply because the Gates effort didn't get great results," Toch argues. "The premise of the foundation's campaign for more personalized high schools -- that anonymity, the lack of meaningful connections between students and adults in big urban high schools, undermines student achievement -- is supported by a raft of research and student and teacher surveys." The problem in the Gates experiment was that its smaller schools, particularly those carved out of existing large schools, often lacked autonomy to create the investment by students and teachers that a smaller scale makes possible. Many schools inherited teachers and staff instead of bringing in more committed instructors -- a key explanation for those who would criticize the small high school mission. "Of course you have to have good instruction" to get students to higher standards, says Robert Balfanz, who directs the Everyone Graduates Center at Johns Hopkins. "But you'll never get there unless the school environment supports it."
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| Real reform doesn't blame |
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As summer ends, many states are implementing policies that tie teacher job security to student performance, and this "new reality" is dividing the teaching profession, according to National Public Radio. Some teacher groups have dropped opposition to student performance-based evaluations, but many see the evaluations as an attack on their profession. Colorado led the way with legislation -- brokered in part by the state's AFT affiliate -- that links teacher tenure and evaluation to student performance. Brenda Smith, president of an AFT local union in Colorado, says her members recognized it was time to stop resisting an idea whose time had come. "The question that I get most often is, 'How do I become an active member in building this system?' I think our teachers see it as a challenge, and I think they're ready for it," Smith says. In contrast, a spokesperson for the larger Colorado Education Association, Deborah Fallin, says teachers "felt [the legislation] was rammed down their throats." Nationally, teachers have their guard up, NPR reports, as pressure on teachers grows. "There's more than just a bad taste," says Richard Iannuzzi of New York State United Teachers. "There's a feeling that our allies have joined the blame game, and if we're gonna make real reform, it can't be about blaming."
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| Now what? |
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Having passed an ambitious education reform law, Maryland is wrestling with complex questions about how student test scores will be used to evaluate teachers, The Baltimore Sun reports. To date, no state judges teachers based on student achievement, so there's no proven path, and many skeptics among teacher unions. One thorny issue is how districts will evaluate teachers whose students don't take state tests -- for instance, music, physical education, or first grade. Despite the fact that most teachers don't teach a subject that is tested, Maryland has committed to having student achievement count for 50 percent of an evaluation. The next step is the creation of an Educator Effectiveness Council that will decide most of the details for the state's evaluation system. As soon as the council is appointed, the state will ask seven districts to pilot the new evaluations in a number of schools while continuing the current system. The state will go to the new system during the 2012-13 school year; no action would be taken to remove or reward a teacher until the following year. "The real tension is between the moral urgency [of getting quality teachers in all classrooms] and the difficulty of turning the policy into fair practice. It's a cycle of years that involves trial runs and mid-course corrections," says Brad Jupp, senior program adviser at the U.S. Department of Education.
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| Cure worse than the disease? |
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An overhaul in the admissions process for Chicago's selective public schools has had little impact on overall diversity, but individual schools in the city have become more segregated for the 2010-11 school year, The Chicago Tribune reports. The new process resulted from a federal requirement that left Chicago Public Schools in the quandary of maintaining racial integration without using race in admissions decisions for desirable schools. The policy shifted focus to socioeconomic factors like income and homeownership rates in a given census tract. For schools that require testing, 40 percent of open spots now go to highest-scoring students, and the remaining are distributed based on socioeconomic rank. At magnet schools, which do not test, all siblings of current students are admitted, and 40 percent of remaining spots go to those living within a mile and half of the school. Again, the rest are distributed based on socioeconomic rank. The result has been that the racial makeup at selective and magnet elementary schools is skewed. "When you see those big, huge spikes [of racial representation in certain schools], you have to figure out what happened in those circumstances, because it's not achieving the objective," said Cynthia Flowers, a member of a panel formed to review the district policy.
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| Leading the way |
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A new study from the University of Minnesota and the University of Toronto, commissioned by the Wallace Foundation, finds that the work of leaders in education -- including state-level officials, superintendents and district staff, principals, school board members, teachers, and community members enacting various leadership roles -- provides direction for policy and practice. The in-depth study of school leadership analyzes quantitative data that confirms education leadership's strong impact on student achievement, as measured by student test scores. In the view of the authors, education leadership makes its mark largely by strengthening a school's "professional community" -- fostering an environment where teachers work together to improve classroom instruction. It therefore follows that rapid turnover of principals reduces student achievement. The study also shows that although the principal remains the central source of leadership in schools, he or she is far from the only source. The highest performing schools operate by a "collective leadership" that involves many interested players, including parents and teachers, in decision-making. "Significant effects on student learning depend on creating synergy across a range of human and institutional resources, so that the overall impact adds up to something worthwhile," according to the study.
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| The scourge of Baumol's disease |
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While education differs in important ways from other service sectors, improvement in productivity in other sectors may hold important lessons for understanding how the education system can become more efficient and effective, according to a white paper from the Center on Reinventing Public Education. While policymakers talk about innovating to "do more with less," in the last two decades, dramatically more productive schooling models have not emerged. The combination of rising costs and stagnant productivity are major problems in an environment where many children are not learning the skills they need and education is unlikely to receive sustained increases in public funding. The authors recommend five steps to counteract this stagnation: 1) systematically consider strategies employed by other labor-intensive industries for their relevance to education; 2) hone in on learning systems outside schools to surface alternative production processes that may yield greater productivity; 3) understand the key cost drivers in the current schooling model, and examine the impact of each on proposed alternatives; 4) prototype new test models; and 5) create a policy agenda for identifying and reproducing the most promising ways to increase productivity.
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Small steps...
Across Connecticut, black, Hispanic, and low-income students gained ground on the annual Connecticut Mastery Test, slightly narrowing the large achievement gap that separates them from their white and more affluent classmates.
http://www.ctmirror.org/story/6834/city-schools-begin-close-achievement-gap-71610
... in some cases, backward
After two years of significant gains across the D.C. school system, elementary students lost ground in reading and math test scores this year.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/07/13/AR2010071306622.html?hpid=moreheadlines
As to NYC gains?
New York State education officials acknowledged that standardized exams became easier to pass over the last four years, and vowed to recalibrate scoring this spring, which will almost certainly mean thousands more students will fail.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/20/nyregion/20tests.html?_r=2&ref=education
Not just for teachers, anymore
Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey has unveiled a plan to limit superintendent pay based on number of students served, and offer bonuses tied to student achievement.
http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2010/07/gov_christie_reveals_plans_to.html |
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| NEW GRANT AND FUNDING INFORMATION |
Libri Foundation: Books for Children
The Libri Foundation Books for Children Grants donate new, quality, hardcover children's books to small, rural public libraries across the country. Maximum award: varies. Eligibility: Libraries should be in a rural area, have a limited operating budget, and an active children's department. The average total operating budget of a Books for Children grant recipient must be less than $40,000. Deadline: August 15, 2010.
http://www.librifoundation.org/apps.html
NSTA: Distinguished Fellow Award
The National Science Teachers Association Distinguished Fellow Award recognizes NSTA members who have made extraordinary contributions to science education through personal commitment to education, specifically science teaching or science; educational endeavors and original work that position recipients as exemplary leaders in their field; or significant contributions to the profession that reflect dedication to the NSTA as well as the entire educational community. Maximum award: recognition at the NSTA Awards Banquet in conjunction with the NSTA National Conference. Eligibility: longstanding (at least 10 years) NSTA members. Deadline: November 30, 2010.
http://www.nsta.org/about/awards.aspx#fellow
Character Education Partnership: National Schools of Character Awards
The National Schools of Character Awards program has a twofold purpose: to identify exemplary schools and districts to serve as models for others; and to help schools and districts improve their efforts in effective character education. Maximum award: varies. Eligibility: schools that have been engaged in character education for a minimum of three full years, starting no later than December 2007. Districts need to have been engaged in character education for a minimum of four full years, starting no later than December 2006. Deadline: December 1, 2010.
http://www.character.org/
AMA/Leader to Leader Institute: AMA Scholarship
The American Management Association and Leader to Leader Institute scholarship program assists social-sector nonprofit organizations in developing strong leadership. The AMA Scholarship is designed to provide nonprofit leaders with an opportunity to step out of the day-to-day, interact with peers across sectors, and develop practical skills they can apply immediately within their organizations. Maximum award: one-year scholarship. Eligibility: employees of 501(c)3 organizations with a minimum of 3 years of work experience in the social sector. Deadline: December 15, 2010.
http://www.leadertoleader.org/collaboration/ama/index.html
Best Buy: Teach@15 Award
The Teach@15 Award program improves classroom learning by helping schools (grades 7-12) meet technology needs. A teen member (age 13-18) who is a registered member on www.at15.com can nominate his/her school to win a Teach@15 Award. Maximum award: $1,500 in the form of Best Buy Gift Cards. Eligibility: accredited, nonprofit junior or senior public, private, parochial, magnet, and charter high schools in the U.S. serving any grades 7-12.
Deadline: ongoing.
http://www.bestbuy-communityrelations.com/teach_awards.htm
For more grants, see http://www.publiceducation.org/newsblast_grants.asp
"For a woman who came into the professional world at a time when we didn't even have laws against sexual harassment, I am bothered by the message we could be sending to our children, that they are different somehow."
-- Annette Werner, Pittsburgh Public Schools parent and member of PURE Reform, a watchdog group, concerning plans by PPS to start single-gender programs at a Pittsburgh high school next year, July 19, 2010.
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/10200/1073727-53.stm#ixzz0uQxznbyg
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