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May 7, 2010 For scrambling districts and organizations, a boost In order to ease financial pressure on school districts, schools, and other nonprofits, a dozen foundations are offering $506 million dollars to match federal grants for education reform, the Associated Press reports. The foundations have set up a joint internet portal, so that organizations can apply to all foundations in one step, streamlining the task of seeking money from multiple sources. Funders will post comments, questions, and requests for more information directly on the online applications, for everyone to see. The unusual group effort reflects support for the Obama administration's push for certain reforms, many of which have been long championed by the foundations. Their money and the federal program are both aimed at three aspects: innovation in the classroom, ideas for turning around low-performing schools, and research to study ideas that can be expanded across the country. The group includes the Annie E. Casey Foundation; Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation; Carnegie Corporation of New York; Charles Stewart Mott Foundation; Ford Foundation; John D. & Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation; Lumina Foundation; Robertson Foundation; Wallace Foundation; Walton Family Foundation; William & Flora Hewlett Foundation; and W.K. Kellogg Foundation. Read more: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5j320SJ-I0y3wd47tns78PNG-y_6AD9FCDHR00 Go to the project registry: http://foundationregistryi3.org When public meets private Using as examples the recent fiscal summit convened by the Peter G. Peterson Foundation and the consortium of foundations that will fund D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee's merit-pay proposal, Mark Schmitt in The American Prospect considers the complicated relationship between private foundations -- often built on the wealth of a single individual -- and public, government efforts. In D.C.'s case, the foundations have made their financial support contingent on Rhee's tenure: If she goes, so does the money. This raises a sticky question, Schmitt writes, especially for a city where Home Rule is incomplete. Shouldn't this be the decision of the electorate or mayor? "What they are saying to D.C. is no different from what grant-making foundations say to nonprofits every day: Here's the kind of project we're interested in funding. If that's what you do, we'll fund you; if not, no thanks." Most large foundations now understand that to have impact, they must influence public policy, something that conservative foundations understood long before centrist and liberal ones did. Still, influential foundations often monopolize conversations around their particular issue, which is dangerous. Schmitt's solution? "More foundations with different perspectives should join these and other debates, and governments should have enough resources of their own to make their own choices, informed and supported by foundations, but not overly dependent on private wealth and its priorities." Read more: http://prospect.org/cs/articles?article=philanthropy_is_my_copilot Easy to open, hard to sustain and expand In an overview of charter schools in this country, The New York Times writes that despite their status as a "pet cause" of what John Goodlad called "a billionaires' club of philanthropists," the majority of the 5,000 charter schools nationwide appear to be no better, and in many cases worse, than local public schools. Celebrities and philanthropists rally around the highly successful charters, but even in the present favorable climate, the challenge of reproducing these high-flying schools is daunting. Observations by The Times at six charters in Cleveland and New York State yielded the insight that high- and low-performing schools "seemed to take pages from the same playbook": student uniforms, a longer day and academic year, frequent testing to measure learning, and tutoring for students who fall behind. The difference, The Times writes, is in how schools are run, classes are taught, and school culture is nourished: "It is like watching two couples dance a tango, one with poise and precision, the other stumbling to execute the intricate footwork." Most can agree that charter school quality varies widely, and is often associated with the rigor of authorities that grant charters. "If you look at the hopes and dreams from 1992, it didn't pan out that quality would rise because of marketplace accountability," said James Merriman, chief executive of the New York City Charter School Center. "It turns out you need government accreditation to drive quality, and the human capital to make schools go. The hard lesson is, it is so dependent on human capital." Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/02/education/02charters.html Related: http://scholasticadministrator.typepad.com/thisweekineducation/2010/05/media-reactions-to-the-times-charter-school-story.html Battle in Colorado Colorado is ground zero in the debate over education reform, writes Alan Gottlieb on the Education News Colorado website, and the fate of a proposed state bill may well be a litmus test of the national appetite for sweeping ed reform. Colorado Senate Bill 10-191 would make significant changes to teacher tenure and teacher evaluation in the state, and is up for consideration by the Colorado House of Representatives, having already passed the state's senate. The bill has some similarities to the Florida bill recently vetoed by Gov. Charlie Crist, and this has put it in the crosshairs of the National Education Association, according to Gottlieb. Moves to sway public opinion against the bill by the teacher union seems to be successful: "The perception that [Senator] Johnston's bill is anti-teacher, that it seeks to blame teachers alone for the failures of American public education, seem to be taking root, at least in some quarters." Gottlieb, who supports the bill, feels that while the bill is far from perfect, its defeat would be a shame. "Most prominent arguments against it border on fear-mongering," he writes. "And the alternative seems to be doing nothing. This may be what the unions not-so-secretly want, but standing pat would be catastrophic." In the past few months, national momentum seems to have shifted "from people pushing school choice and the revamp of tenure and evaluation -- the Obama-Duncan agenda" to a newly energized union constituency. Read more: http://blog.ednewscolorado.org/2010/05/04/from-the-editor-colorado-is-ground-zero/ A hotbed of criminal investigation What began as a federal probe of a single charter school in Northeast Philadelphia two years ago has spread to at least 18 city schools and may be the largest federal charter investigation in the country, The Philadelphia Inquirer reports. In recent weeks, federal subpoenas seeking five years' worth of financial records have been served on schools across the city. The probe was launched shortly after The Inquirer reported allegations of financial mismanagement, nepotism, and conflicts of interest at one school. The probe widened as The Inquirer disclosed problems at other charters, and now includes all 13 schools that the city comptroller highlighted in his recent charter investigation. The comptroller found compliant charter boards, apparent conflicts of interest, unusual salary arrangements, and complex facility leasing deals. Though the city appears to be a hotbed of charter malfeasance, the U.S. Department of Education has warned that charters across the country were increasingly the focus of fraud allegations. In the last five years, the Inspector General's Office has opened more than 40 criminal investigations of charter schools nationwide that have resulted in 18 indictments and 15 convictions. Read more: http://www.philly.com/inquirer/front_page/20100503_U_S__probe_widens_to_18_city_charters.html How much difference does the difference make? Which pathway produces better-qualified teachers has been the subject of debate, but the distinction between traditional and alternative pathways is not clear-cut, according to a new report from the National Research Council on teacher education programs. Scant data limit the ability to draw conclusions about which approaches are effective or how to design better ones. There is broad overlap in content and practice between school categories, and as much variation within each category as between them. The study recommends that the U.S. Department of Education develop a national education data network to integrate existing information on teacher preparation, drive the collection of new data, and provide needed information to researchers and policymakers working toward better approaches to preparing K-12 teachers. More than 200,000 students complete teacher preparation programs in the U.S. every year. Between 70 and 80 percent are enrolled in traditional bachelor's or master's degree programs in colleges and universities. The rest enter through one of about 130 alternative routes, such as Teach for America or Teaching Fellows, which seek to recruit and train teachers without traditional degrees or certification. See the report: http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=12882&page=1 Careful what you wish for The general tenor these days about education reform seems to be a push to replace bad teachers, but to what effect? Who teaches when they're gone? This is thrown into relief when you look at the matter of substitute teachers, according to Beatrice Motamedi in an op-ed in The San Francisco Chronicle. A frequent critique of teachers is high absenteeism, in part driven by the fact that so many subs are dismal. Unlike other workers, who mention family and personal issues as the reasons for absences, teachers more often identify stress, overwork, and lack of planning time. Significantly, these reasons are often cited in studies of teacher retention and burnout. The current tendency to blame teachers can't help. "When teachers are allowed to be human, perhaps we'll understand that educational excellence isn't a matter of scapegoating them," Motamedi writes. Reform should include not only paying teachers more and improving working conditions, but also increasing the training and pay of high-quality substitutes for those few times when teachers must be absent. "Sure, we could fire teachers and replace them with new and fresh ones who never take a day off and don't need more money," she says. "But in time, they'll suffer from the same problems that teachers do now." Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/05/02/IN9K1D6AQE.DTL&type=printable School leaders are the bedrock The importance of principals has long been recognized by educators and researchers, but empirical studies on the effectiveness and distribution of principals have been undermined by the lack of data on their complex work and their impact on school outcomes. A new brief from the Urban Institute's National Center for the Analysis of Longitudinal Data in Education Research (CALDER) draws on state data to calculate the effects of principals for different kinds of schools and students. Of the five domains of working conditions identified -- leadership, facilities, empowerment, professional development, and time policies -- leadership emerges as the most salient dimension affecting teachers' plans to remain at or leave their schools. Teachers' perceptions of leadership in particular are also predictive of actual one-year departure rates and student achievement. These data show that the quality of a principal affects a range of school outcomes, including teacher satisfaction, parent perception, and the academic performance of the school. Findings from this work also demonstrate that principals with the experience and skills found to be related to effectiveness are less likely to be working in high-poverty and low-achieving schools, raising equity concerns about the distribution of effective principals. See the brief: http://www.caldercenter.org/ In poor schools and neighborhoods, a Latino slide downward A new article in the journal Developmental Psychology finds that a majority of Latino children enter kindergarten with the same social skills as middle-class white children, and demonstrate stronger social skills than comparable low-income African-American kindergartners at the start of school, reports Education Week. However, early gains are likely to disappear if they attend low-quality schools and live in low-income neighborhoods. "We need to get beyond this myth that low-income parents always raise disadvantaged children," said Bruce Fuller, a professor of education and public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, who co-edited the articles and was a researcher for the study. Researchers also looked at how having those social skills, which were rated by teachers, translated into kindergartners' acquisition of mathematics knowledge. They found a strong correlation between their social competency when entering kindergarten and the gains they made in math skills. The study looked at several social areas: self-control, interpersonal skills, approaches to learning, and internalizing and externalizing problem behaviors. It drew on a database of 19,590 kindergartners, called the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, to compare the social skills of children from different ethnic and racial groups. Read more: http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2010/05/03/31latino-2.h29.html?tkn=YMBFkO3ZHQ1759hohTiTAwKcl%2Bi6%2BruZ9zH9&cmp=clp-ecseclips BRIEFLY NOTED At your fingertips The Alliance for Excellent Education has compiled data for all 50 states relevant to the need for improved standards and assessments and the potential benefits of educating all students to meet the common college- and career-ready core standards. http://www.all4ed.org/publication_material/commonstandardsstatecards Now hiring The 93 teachers, staff, and administrators at Central Falls High School, R.I., may now reapply for their jobs. http://www.projo.com/education/content/central_falls_changes_at_high_sc_04-27-10_OMI_v34.3b2ff23.html Closing the achievement gap? A New York Post review of data from the city's Department of Education found that African-American charter-school students were 60 percent more likely than their traditional public school counterparts to earn a seat in one of New York City's "specialized" high schools last year. http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/for_minorities_charter_school_boost_uoRHGgfy1G2x2XkLrtojRI#ixzz0n8hv5TQX Piling on Arizona's superintendent of public instruction is seeking to end ethnic studies classes, which he claims segregate students by race. http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/local/articles/2010/05/01/20100501arizona-bill-bans-ethnic-studies.html#ixzz0n8pIqbg3 Related: http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/local/articles/2010/05/05/20100505arizona-school-district-owes-state-money.html Florida's teacher union backs new Race to the Top plan The state's application still has merit-pay provisions, but they would be less strict than those suggested in the first application or in the controversial teacher performance bill Gov. Crist vetoed two weeks ago. http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/education/os-race-to-top-agreement-04-29-10-20100429,0,5492050.story GRANT AND FUNDING INFORMATION National Weather Association: Sol Hirsch Teacher Grants National Weather Association Sol Hirsch Teacher Grants aim to improve students' education in meteorology. Selected teachers can use funds to take an accredited course in atmospheric sciences, attend a relevant workshop or conference, or purchase scientific materials or equipment for the classroom. Maximum award: $750. Eligibility: K-12 teachers. Deadline: June 1, 2010. http://www.nwas.org/grants/solhirsch.php? National Endowment for the Arts: Grants for Learning in the Arts for Children and Youth NEA Grants for Learning in the Arts for Children and Youth support in-depth, curriculum-based arts education experiences that occur over an extended period in school-based or community settings. Projects must provide participatory learning and engage students with skilled artists, teachers, and excellent art. All projects must include: 1) the opportunity for students and their teachers to experience exemplary works of art, in live form wherever possible; 2) study of the art experienced, including the acquisition of skills for practicing the art form, where appropriate; 3) the performance/making of art within the discipline(s) studied; and 4) assessment of student learning according to national or state arts education standards. Maximum award: $150,000. Eligibility: 501(c)3 organizations that administer school-based projects for children and youth between kindergarten and grade 12, directly connected to a school curriculum and instructional program, and ensuring the application of national or state arts education standard; or community-based projects for children and youth between ages 5 and 18. Deadline: June 10, 2010. http://www.arts.gov/grants/apply/GAP11/LITA.html ASCAP Foundation: Grants for Music Education The ASCAP Foundation is now considering proposals from organizations engaging in music education and talent development programs that support music education for aspiring songwriters and composers. Maximum award: $3,000. Eligibility: 501(c)3 organizations. Deadline: October 1, 2010. http://www.ascapfoundation.org/grants.html Freedoms Foundation: Leavey Awards for Excellence in Private Enterprise Education The Freedoms Foundation at Valley Forge Leavey Awards for Excellence in Private Enterprise Education honor outstanding educators who excite a commitment in their students to the free enterprise system and unleash the entrepreneurial skills of their students at the elementary, junior high school, high school, and college level. Maximum award: $15,000. Eligibility: teachers at schools (K-12), colleges, and universities. Deadline: November 30, 2010. http://www.freedomsfoundation.org/Leavy-Awards.cfm 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. 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