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June 19, 2009 |
Click here to read printable version |
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| 'So far from the work being done, it's not even funny' |
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In a recent editorial in The Washington Post, its editors came out strongly in support of D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee and her efforts to overhaul the D.C. schools. They quote her characteristically blunt assessment of her department's work to date F -- and write that "her refusal to spin or sugarcoat testifies to why she is the best, perhaps last, hope to improve a system in which, even now, only 8 percent of eighth-graders can do eighth-grade math." Despite a sometimes rocky relationship with the teacher union and administrators, the editors point to "promising signs": an early improvement in district test scores, enhanced professional development for teachers, rigorous after-school and enrichment programs, and a new emphasis on competence and accountability. She has even managed, they write, "to make some headway in the nightmare that is the special education system." What the editors find most compelling is that Rhee has raised expectations for D.C. students and brought a sense of urgency to remaking the District into the highest-performing urban school system in the country. In their opinion, "she should not have to spend time fighting the efforts of those who would hold her back, and the District's children along with her."
Read more | Related | Back to top
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| The hard dilemmas facing migrant families |
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Florida's approximately 20,000 documented migrant students face dual challenges to receiving high-school diplomas and continuing to college, The Tallahassee Democrat reports. The economic realities that push their parents to frequently move for work, combined with the English-only state assessment tests, make a hurdle many can't overcome. If they do graduate and pursue higher education, the financial strain often pulls a family downward, since additional part-time jobs or extra hours in fields at subsistence wages can't lift migrant families to financial stability. Though many migrant parents want to save their kids from the same life, they're stuck. Lori Rodriguez of the Florida Department of Education says most migrant children are first-generation English speakers, and usually their parents are illiterate in their native tongue. "These parents can't even read what's sent home to them [in Spanish]," she explains. "For those of us who are from educated families -- it's very difficult to understand." Rodriguez believes a first step is communication. States with large migrant communities must have better outreach, stressing the need to stay in one district for their children rather than bounce around to where work takes them.
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| A Connecticut city finally dismantles academic tracking |
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Stamford, Conn., one of "the last bastions of rigid educational tracking" in the country, will do away with its system this fall, The New York Times reports. The current system -- three to five levels at each of four middle schools -- broke down predictably along racial and socioeconomic lines, while experimental, mixed-ability classes yielded fewer behavior problems and better grades for struggling students, though higher achievers complained of boredom. The new, two-tiered model will enroll the top quarter of sixth graders in honors classes, the rest in college-prep classes. Still, more than 300 Stamford parents are opposed to the change and have signed a petition against it, with some considering moving or switching their children to private schools. The parents feel Stamford's mix of poor urban neighborhoods and wealthy enclaves requires multiple academic tracks, and say the district could make the system fairer by facilitating more movement between levels through frequent testing. But Stamford Superintendent Joshua Starr said tracking has failed to prepare lower-achieving children for high school and college. "There are certainly people who want to maintain the status quo because some people have benefited from the status quo," he said. "I know that we cannot afford that anymore. It's not fair to too many kids."
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| Report shows that truly, few have been left behind |
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In its third annual analysis of state testing data, a new report from the Center on Education Policy finds that contrary to widespread concerns, the mandates of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) have not sacrificed the needs of the highest and lowest achieving students in favor of those in the middle "proficient" level. The 50-state analysis, which for the first time includes data about student performance at the advanced and basic levels, profiles each state, showing trends in reading and math in elementary, middle, and high school. The report finds that even though NCLB creates incentives for schools to ensure that students reach proficiency, states saw increases at the advanced and basic-and-above levels as well. At the basic-and-above level, 73 percent of the trend lines analyzed across various subjects and grades showed gains. At the advanced level, 71 percent of the trend lines showed improvement. "If accountability policies were indeed shortcoming high- and low-achieving students, we would expect to see stagnation or decline at basic or advanced levels," said Jack Jennings, CEP's president and CEO. "Instead, the percentage of students scoring at the basic-and-above and advanced levels has increased much more often than they've decreased, especially in the lower grades."
See Part I of the report | Back to top
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| National 'group portrait' of charters indicates significant portion underperform |
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A new study from Stanford University is the first national assessment of charter school impacts, a longitudinal, student-level analysis that looks at more than 70 percent of the students in charter schools in the United States. This "group portrait" shows that that a decent portion of charters (17 percent) provide superior education opportunities for students. Nearly half of charter schools nationwide have results no different from local public school options, and over a third, 37 percent, deliver learning results significantly worse than would have been realized in traditional public schools. The report notes that overall, two groups of students, English language learners and those in poverty, fare better than average in charters, outperforming their peers in traditional public schools. But despite success in particular states or subgroups, the report says its results "indicate a disturbing and far-reaching subset of poorly performing charter schools. If the charter school movement is to flourish, or indeed to deliver on promises made by proponents, a deliberate and sustained effort to increase the proportion of high-quality schools is essential." The authors recommend the replication of successful school models, and "accountability in exchange for flexibility." Schools that consistently fail must be closed.
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| To staunch the drop out crisis, we need a fundamental shift |
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As a follow-up to its report three years ago on the dropout crisis in American public education, Civic Enterprises has released a new report that includes the views of teachers and administrators, perspectives missing from its first report. In their surveys and focus groups, the authors found that teachers and administrators supported measures to address the crisis, but less than one-third of teachers thought schools should expect all students to meet high academic standards, graduate with the skills for college-level work, and provide support to struggling students, and half of principals and administrators felt the same way. These attitudes have been shaped by experiences in the classroom, particularly with students who showed low skill levels and weak motivation late into high school. Placed side-by-side with results of the earlier survey, in which two-thirds of dropouts said they would have worked harder had more been demanded of them, this newer survey reveals an "expectations gap." The authors feel that none of the measures that might mitigate the drop out problem – alternative learning communities, an expansion of college-level learning opportunities, learning connected to real-world opportunities, and early warning systems that start in elementary school -- are likely to be successful without a fundamental shift in expectations.
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| Who will test the testers? |
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"It's great news that the [Obama] administration intends to improve the quality and relevance of education research," writes Claus von Zastrow in a post on his Public School Insights blog. "I hope they'll also make good on their vow to improve the quality of assessments." He points to two recent news items that underscore how the value of education research depends heavily on the quality of assessments that measure school and student gains. He cites a New York Daily News analysis of the significant jump in New York State test scores, by Jennifer Jennings of Eduwonk. She feels that the tests have grown less challenging and more susceptible to test-prep manipulation. Von Zastrow also cites a new study of charter schools by Harvard University, which found a low cognitive demand placed on students in some high-performing charters, and an emphasis on procedure over conceptual understanding. "As we try to determine the effect of promising reforms, we need greater confidence in our measures," says von Zastrow. A model he would follow is that of the Consortium on Chicago School Research, which from 1998 to 2002 evaluated Chicago's reforms on the basis of assignments and student work.
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| Real-time data lead to real-time improvement |
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In Montgomery County, Md., a $47 million-per-year technology investment puts its schools at the forefront of the "data-driven" movement in U.S. education, according to The Wall Street Journal. Using district-issued Palm Pilots, for instance, teachers can pull up snapshots of each student's progress on tests and other measures of proficiency, building on the data culled from No Child Left Behind testing. The high-tech strategy uses intensified assessments and real-time collection of test scores, grades, and other data to identify problems and speed up interventions. The 139,000-student district, one of the nation's largest, says it has now "nearly closed" an achievement gap between white and minority students in the early grades. It has also been able to identify minorities with academic gifts earlier, promoting many more into demanding AP classes. Citing the district, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has said, "They're doing a tremendous amount right," noting it is one of only a handful in the nation that tracks the college completion rate of its graduates. Montgomery's data system should be "the norm, not the exception," in his opinion. Since federal education stimulus funds will be tied to the provision of data on student gains, it is expected that similar systems will spread around the country.
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Why Don't Students Like School?
Daniel T. Willingham summarizes recent work in cognitive psychology to explain why it is that people like to learn new things, but often say that they don't like school.
http://www.tcrecord.org/Content.asp?ContentID=15609
Voluntary integration gets an assist
The California Supreme Court has rejected a challenge to Berkeley's policy of considering the racial composition of students' neighborhoods in deciding where they will enroll.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/06/11/BA1B184L6O.DTL
84-year-old principal takes a bow
Kids haven't changed much in 60 years, Virginia Grabbe feels.
http://www.sacbee.com/education/story/1940418.html?mi_rss=Education
Philadelphia's privatization experiment fails, but survives
Associate Superintendent Benjamin W. Rayer said private firms would be contracted to provide supportive services rather than manage schools, receiving the same payment as before.
http://www.philly.com/inquirer/education/20090611_SRC_told_firms_need_new_role.html
Schwarzenegger may kindle a revolution yet
California's governor has launched an initiative to see if the state's six million public school students could use more online learning materials, including open courseware -- perhaps saving millions of dollars a year in textbook purchases.
http://www.eschoolnews.com/news/top-news/?i=59180 |
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| NEW GRANT AND FUNDING INFORMATION |
Robert Wood Johnson Foundation: Active Living Research and Healthy Eating Research Grants
Active Living Research and Healthy Eating Research are national programs that support research to identify promising policy and environmental strategies for increasing physical activity, promoting healthy eating, and preventing obesity. This call for proposals supports time-sensitive, opportunistic studies to evaluate changes in policies or environments with the potential to reach children who are at highest risk for obesity, including African-American, Latino, Native American, Asian-American, and Pacific Islander children (ages 3 to 18) who live in low-income communities or communities with limited access to affordable healthy foods and/or safe opportunities for physical activity. Research studies may focus on one or both sides of the energy balance equation -- on physical activity (including sedentary behavior), healthy eating, or both. Maximum award: $150,000. Eligibility: 501(c)3 organizations in the United States whose program, event, or policy change to be studied justify the rapid-review process in order to answer the proposed research questions. Deadline: July 17, 2009, for letter of intent.
http://www.rwjf.org/applications/solicited/cfp.jsp?ID=20681
LEGO: Grants for Early Childhood Education and Development
The LEGO Children's Fund will provide grants for collaborative programs, either in part or in total, to organizations that focus on early childhood education and development; technology and communication projects that advance learning opportunities; or sport or athletic programs that concentrate on underserved youth. Maximum award: $5,000. Eligibility: 501(c)3 organizations. Deadline: August 1, 2009.
http://www.legochildrensfund.org/Guidelines.html
NEA: Learning & Leadership Grants
NEA Foundation Learning & Leadership Grants are given to public school teachers, public education support professionals, and/or faculty and staff in public institutions of higher education for one of two purposes: Grants to individuals fund participation in high-quality professional development experiences, such as summer institutes or action research; Grants to groups fund collegial study, including study groups, action research, lesson study, or mentoring experiences for faculty or staff new to an assignment. Maximum award: $5,000 for groups, $2,000 for individuals. Eligibility: public school teachers grades K–12; public school education support professionals; or faculty and staff at public higher education institutions. Deadline: October 15, 2009.
http://www.neafoundation.org/programs/Learning&Leadership_Guidelines.htm
American Management Association and Leader to Leader Institute: Year-long Scholarship
The American Management Association (AMA) and Leader to Leader Institute scholarship program assists social-sector nonprofit organizations in developing strong leadership. The scholarship is designed to give nonprofit leaders an opportunity to step out of the day-to-day, interact with peers across sectors, and develop practical skills to apply immediately within their organizations. Maximum award: one-year scholarship. Eligibility: employees of 501(c)3 organizations with a minimum of three years of work experience in the social sector. Deadline: December 15, 2009.
http://leadertoleader.org/collaboration/ama/index.html
For more grants, see http://www.publiceducation.org/newsblast_grants.asp
"In these neighborhoods, schools are life or death for a lot of these kids. It's the inequity of how these layoffs are being done. It's frustrating."
-Sean Leys, 10-year teaching veteran, on the disproportionate layoffs of new teachers in Los Angeles.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_LA_SCHOOLS_LAYOFFS?SITE=DCUSN&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT
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