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March 13, 2009 Retooling our global edge In his first address to deal exclusively with education, President Barack Obama proposed lengthening the school year and increasing pay for high-performing teachers to regain an American edge in the world economy, Reuters reports. "Despite resources that are unmatched anywhere in the world, we have let our grades slip, our schools crumble, our teacher quality fall short, and other nations outpace us," Mr. Obama told the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. "The future belongs to the nation that best educates its citizens, and my fellow Americans, we have everything we need to be that nation." To fulfill this potential, the president outlined a "cradle-to-career" plan that expanded early childhood programs and gave more money to states that raised student standards, tracked student progress, and cut drop-out rates. The president made clear that his administration will put the full weight of the federal government behind the reforms, tripling funds for education in the 2010 fiscal year beginning October 1. "In a 21st-century world where jobs can be shipped wherever there's an internet connection, where a child born in Dallas is competing with children in Delhi... education is no longer just a pathway to opportunity and success, it is a prerequisite," he said. Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/10/AR2009031000477.html See also: http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-obama-education_wedmar11,0,6571296.story See also: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/12/opinion/12thu1.html Bureaucracy can't teach School reformers for decades have tried different ideas and techniques to try to make schools work better. All these reforms have been based on an unspoken assumption: that better organization is the key to fixing whatever ails schools. The theory is that by imposing more organizational requirements -- better teacher credentials, more legal rights, detailed curricula, the pressure of tests -- schools will get better. That's the theory. The effect, however, is to remove the freedom needed to succeed at any aspect of teachers' responsibilities -- how they teach, how they relate to students, and how they coordinate their goals with administrators. The extent and effects of bureaucracy may indeed surprise people from the real world, writes Philip K. Howard, a civic leader and public policy activist, in his lively new book, "Life Without Lawyers." Read a free chapter: http://www.philipkhoward.com/images/uploads/Life_Without_Lawyers_Chapter_5_Special.pdf The battle over '21st-century' skills At least 10 states have committed to "21st-century skills" -- the idea that kids need to think critically and creatively, be technologically savvy, and work well with others, according to USA TODAY. The idea is now commonplace in curriculum reform, but a group of education scholars fears the trend is eating up classroom time better spent learning essential content. The issue, they say, is whether kids learn to think by reading great literature, doing difficult math, and learning history, philosophy, and science -- or if they can tackle those on their own if schools teach them to problem-solve, communicate, use technology, and think creatively. The 21st-century skills movement is "a fragmented approach with uncertain cognitive goals," according to E.D. Hirsch, Jr., founder of the Core Knowledge Foundation and author of a series of books on what students should learn year-by-year in school. Most likely to suffer, he says, are low-income students, who get less background information in history, science, and literature at home than middle-class students. Ken Kay, co-founder of the Arizona-based Partnership for 21st Century Skills, calls criticisms by Hirsch and others "a sideshow that distracts people from the issue at hand: that our kids need world-class skills and world-class content." Kay notes that virtually all of the industrialized countries with which the USA competes "are pursuing both content and skills." Read more: http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2009-03-04-core-knowledge_N.htm ACLU sues over gay-straight high school club in Florida Two students at a north Florida high school are suing their school board over its banning of a Gay-Straight Alliance club, according to The Associated Press. ACLU attorney Robert Rosenwald, Jr., argued before a federal judge that Hannah Page and Jacob Brock had been the target of anti-gay epithets and threats of violence at school, and started the Gay-Straight Alliance to open a discourse among students. Attorney Frank Sheppard, who represents the school board, said the district's main complaint is the name of the group, since the district does not approve of groups dealing with sexual orientation and has an abstinence-based sex education curriculum. "If they change the name and comply with Nassau County School Board policies, they can meet," Sheppard said. Rosenwald pointed out that the Fellowship of Christian Athletes meets on the high school campus, and its booklet includes references to sexual issues, including a student pledge to remain sexually pure and an article about dealing with homosexuality in the locker room. U.S. District Judge Henry Adams, Jr. gave the school board three days to respond to the booklet. Read more: http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2009-03-06-gay-alliance_N.htm Working for professional development that works Professional development (PD) in education is a "tarnished brand" whose consumers are "angry," "unsatisfied," and "resigned," according to Hayes Mizell in an article in the spring issue of JSD, a publication of the National Staff Development Council. PD's brand, which he poses as a group of associations and experiences unintentionally built up over decades, must change its "context, content, and process" if it is to be something educators will value and consume. This will happen, Mizell writes, if educators knowledgeable about PD through personal study, conferences, and collegial networking become advocates for PD reform. "The most direct and naturalistic approach [to this advocacy] is through informal conversation. In one-on-one or small group exchanges, advocates for a new brand of professional learning can begin by casually raising the subject of staff development." The focus should be on whether educators consider their professional development to be useful and how it can be more so, even in schools with recent innovations like instructional coaches and learning communities. Advocates can eventually approach other educators in positions of authority with specific, workable proposals, and move on to civic groups and institutions to engage the public over strategies to make professional development more effective. Read more: http://www.nsdc.org/news/issueDetails.cfm?issueID=263 See also: http://www.teachermagazine.org/tm/articles/2009/03/04/030409tln_norton.h20.html Schools instructed to spend stimulus funds quickly "Spend funds quickly to save and create jobs," is the message in a five-page guidance document from the Education Department to governors, state education commissioners, and thousands of school superintendents, The New York Times reports. It is the first indication of how the department will funnel $100 billion to the nation's 14,000 school districts over the next few months, $44 billion of which will be available before the end of March. Hundreds of thousands of job losses in schools have been projected for this fall because of a steep drop in state tax revenues. School stimulus money will be distributed, the guidance document said, after states apply for the financing and provide congressionally mandated "assurances" to Secretary of Education Arne Duncan that they are complying with federal education laws. The communication warned educators to spend the stimulus money, which is temporary, in ways that would minimize the dislocation that could follow when it ran out in two years. Some department officials are describing the exhaustion of the stimulus money in two years as a "cliff" over which school districts could plunge if they do not spend the money wisely. Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/09/education/09educ.html Choosing pragmatic experimentation over rigid ideology The Century Foundation has released "Educational Strategies That Work," which examines Oklahoma's universal pre-K program; the voluntary inter-district transfer program in St. Louis, Missouri; and New Jersey's innovative, low-income "Abbot" public schools. The brief is a response to President Obama's declared intention to identify, support, and expand successful domestic programs and eliminate those that don't work. In each program examined in the brief, "the ideas pursued were an outgrowth of pragmatic experimentation, as opposed to adherence to rigid ideology," writes Greg Anrig, vice-president for policy at the foundation and author of the paper. Anrig suggests the federal government should create incentives for states and localities to pursue similar strategies, and launch an active campaign to explain their implementation across the country. "All of these ideas would promote long-term, broadly shared benefits, and at least in some cases, have the dual virtue of helping to create productive jobs during a period when the United States is experiencing what may be the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression," Anrig states in his introduction. Read the press release: http://www.tcf.org/pressreleases/WorkPR.pdf See the brief: http://www.tcf.org/Publications/Education/Greg_Education.pdf A safe place to get their act together In a profile of the National Guard's Youth ChalleNGe, The New York Times cites early results of a study by MDRC suggesting it is the most successful large-scale program yet evaluated to help dropouts. More than 7,000 teenagers each year graduate from its sites in 28 states. Nine months after leaving the program, participants were 36 percent more likely than a control group to have obtained a G.E.D. or a high school degree, more than three times as likely to be attending college, and nine percent more likely to be working full time. "The impacts are pretty large," said Harry J. Holzer, a labor and poverty expert at Georgetown University. "So few interventions have proven to be cost-effective for the out-of-school, disadvantaged youth population when rigorously evaluated." The camps, which have a military atmosphere, don't admit youths with felony records and expel those who fail a drug test, steal, or fight. Participation is voluntary. About 20 percent of entrants withdraw from each cohort, mainly in the first two weeks. "By taking [participants] away from their neighborhoods, we're giving them a safe place to get their act together," explained Army Colonel Janet Zimmerman, Ret., who runs the camp. "These youths have been told they are failures. Here they find that if they straighten up, others will believe in them." Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/08/us/08cadet.html See the report: http://www.mdrc.org/publications/512/overview.html KIPP and Mastery may expand in Philly Philadelphia superintendent Arlene Ackerman has proposed that charters or other private operators should take over 35 failing city schools, prompting two of the district's most successful charters, KIPP (Knowledge is Power Program) and Mastery, to consider expansion, according to The Philadelphia Inquirer. Mastery's CEO Scott Gordon called Ackerman's Imagine 2014 draft proposal "a breakthrough opportunity," so promising that Mastery has halted talks with school officials in other large cities about expansion. Marc Mannella, CEO of KIPP Philadelphia, said the superintendent's plan is so intriguing that for the first time in its 15-year history, the company might consider turning failing public schools into charters. "I'm really looking forward to digging in and figuring out how we can make what we do well help what the district needs," Mannella said. Both organizations have a record of helping struggling students excel, though they are not without their detractors. Although Ackerman mentioned KIPP and Mastery in her proposal, she emphasized that others could bid for schools, including successful principals. "There are going to be site visits to outside providers to take a look at their success, not only here but in other places," she said. Her blueprint for reorganizing schools awaits approval from the city's School Reform Commission. Read more: http://www.philly.com/inquirer/education/20090312_Charter_operators_see_opportunity_in_district_restructuring.html?viewAll=y Differentiated instruction without judging books by their covers As a result of a federal court case known as P.J. v. State of Connecticut, more intellectually disabled and special education students are now taught in the state's regular classrooms. This has led to widespread differentiated teaching, The Hartford Courant writes, often without a teacher's aide, and requires preparation of complex lessons on the part of teachers to reach every student. "You tend to teach to the middle, you lose the bottom, and you struggle to keep the top kids engaged," explained one principal. Since September, however, several schools in East Hartford have been taking part in a research project sponsored by the Benchmark Education Co., a publisher of education materials. Benchmark is donating money, books, and training for teachers and literacy coaches over the next two years to study its "leveled readers" books, which have the same covers but come in three levels of reading difficulty so teachers can simultaneously discuss the same topic with struggling, average, and advanced readers. Researchers from New England College and the University of Massachusetts are testing children at the three schools to see if their reading scores improve. Third-grade classes at one participating school have students reading from the first-grade to the fifth-grade level. Read more: http://www.courant.com/news/education/hc-readers0306.artmar06,0,5791544.story See also: http://www.edutopia.org/differentiated-instruction-student-success Weighing alternatives in the revision of NCLB A new study from Education Sector by accountability expert Charles Barone examines Tennessee's growth model system as an alternative to the prescriptions of NCLB. "Are We There Yet? What Policymakers Can Learn From Tennessee's Growth Model" finds issues that state and federal policymakers should consider as they contemplate growth model use. Barone allows that the Tennessee Growth Model both focuses on achievement of all children rather than those around the "bubble of proficiency" and credits schools for progress that NCLB, as currently written, does not. However, the Department of Education ranks Tennessee lowest of any state in terms of proficiency standards, so the state may set the bar for adequate progress too low. Tennessee's "expected score" system estimates a student's path to proficiency in this time, but many will not reach proficiency in three years, or ever. The complexity of the system's statistical analysis makes it less transparent for parents and the general public. Barone concludes that "the use of growth models represents an opportunity to improve upon the state accountability systems currently in use under NCLB... However, the growth models currently being used by 15 states under the federal pilot program vary greatly in their specific characteristics." Those specifics, Barone states, matter. Read more: http://www.educationsector.org/usr_doc/Are_We_There_Yet.pdf BRIEFLY NOTED Nanoscience and micropipettes, not just for the 'academic cream' A North Carolina teacher leads struggling students to national achievement in science. http://www.charlotteobserver.com/education/story/583405.html New York's mayor pushes hard to retain control of schools Michael R. Bloomberg forecast "disaster" and "riots" if lawmakers failed to reauthorize a 2002 law that gave him sweeping control. http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2009-03-06-mayor-bloomberg-schools_N.htm No surprise: applications for subs surge As unemployment continues to rise, school districts nationwide are being flooded with applications for substitute teaching jobs. http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2009-03-10-substitute-teachers_N.htm Money for nothing UC Berkeley professor Bruce Fuller argues that the president's new education initiatives pour money into "stale federal programs that have long failed to elevate students' learning curves." http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/03/06/ED2R16A1IC.DTL&feed=rss.education 'Tidal wave' of homeless students hits schools The economic downturn has uprooted thousands of families, with serious ramifications for both a future generation and the overburdened public school system. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29356160/ Reporting student abuse in the classroom If you saw a colleague strike a student, would you report the incident? What if you feared retribution from the principal? http://www.teachermagazine.org/forums/?plckForumPage=ForumDiscussion&plckDiscussionId=Cat%3a047dba43-3f1d-45c3-831f-9125f292c0a4Forum%3aeb655bef-8ef4-4b7d-8e62-e14880996e48Discussion%3a3f7187e4-0e47-4e30-ae95-b27910354ad4&plckCategoryCurrentPage=0 NEW GRANT & FUNDING OPPORTUNITIES Get free donations of classroom supplies Rather than reach deeper into their own pockets, a few creative educators are waging grassroots fundraising efforts. In this Edutopia article, educators share tips for stocking up -- without reaching into their own wallets. Some strategies are controversial, but all are worth considering. http://www.edutopia.org/free-school-supplies-fundraising-donation Project Learning Tree: Green Works! Project Learning Tree GreenWorks! gives grants for community action and service-learning projects. GreenWorks! projects should address an environmental issue, and can involve students from preschool to high school in hands-on community action. Maximum award: $5,000. Eligibility: applicant must have received training in PLT; youth must implement the project; project must integrate student learning and community service; project must include at least one community partner, such as a local organization or business; project must acquire 50 percent matching funds. Deadline: April 30, 2009. http://www.plt.org/cms/pages/21_22_18.html NEA Foundation: Learning & Leadership Grants NEA Foundation Learning & Leadership Grants support 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. Eligibility: public school teachers grades K-12; public school education support professionals; or faculty and staff at public higher education institutions. Deadline: June 1, 2009. http://www.neafoundation.org/programs/Learning&Leadership_Guidelines.htm The National Association of Independent Schools: Challenge 20/20 Partnership The National Association of Independent Schools invites schools to participate in Challenge 20/20, a program that brings together two schools: one from the United States and one from outside of the United States. Teacher-student teams from both schools work together throughout the fall 2009 school semester to come up with a solution to a global problem. Challenge 20/20 is based on Jean François Rischard's book, "High Noon: 20 Global Problems, 20 Years to Solve Them." Maximum award: program participation. Eligibility: all U.S. schools, elementary and secondary, public or private. Deadline: August 17, 2009. http://www.nais.org/resources/index.cfm?ItemNumber=147262 QUOTE OF THE WEEK "In this fantasy transformation, then, these children become the subjects of an inhumane psychological experiment, one that reflects a white middle-class notion of social reform and education reform achieved on the cheap, with disposable teachers from TFA, and a bottom line outcome that is impressive only if we are willing to forget to count the losses. In these academic and behavioral boot camps that include ten hours a day plus two hours for homework, these children are caught between the world they have forsaken in order to be KIPPsters and the one they are incapable of entering, a distant and shining land that will be waiting for those who work hard enough and are nice enough. The half or more who can't run the gauntlet are dumped back into the school-to-prison pipeline, where they absorb their own failure as an earned result for not working hard enough, or being nice enough." -Jim Horn, in his review of Jay Mathews's "Work Hard, Be Nice" about the Knowledge is Power Program (KIPP) http://edrev.asu.edu/essays/v12n3.pdf The PEN Weekly NewsBlast, published by Public Education Network, is a free electronic newsletter featuring resources and information about public school reform, school finance, and related issues. The NewsBlast is the property of Public Education Network, a national association of 79 local education funds working to improve public school quality in low-income communities throughout the nation. Please forward this e-mail to anyone who enjoys free updates on education news and grant alerts. Some links in the PEN Weekly NewsBlast may change or expire after their initial publication here, and some links may require local website registration. People wishing to add a NewsBlast subscription can go to PEN's website (http://www.publiceducation.org) and follow the instructions in the lower left-hand section of the homepage. Current subscribers can unsubscribe by clicking the appropriate link near the bottom of the NewsBlast mailing. If you use spam filters to protect your inbox, you may wish to take a moment right now to add PEN@publiceducation.org to your e-mail address book, spam-software whitelist, or mail-system whitelist. Adding the address will help ensure that you receive the NewsBlast and that your e-mail software displays HTML and images properly. Public Education Network |
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