|
|
| |
 |
| |
|
May 28, 2010 |
Click here to read printable version |
|
| Welcome to the Constitutional Republic of America |
| |
The Texas state school board has given final approval to social studies standards that minimize the separation of church and state and say that America is not a democracy but a "constitutional republic," The Washington Post reports. The changes, which passed in a series of nine-to-five votes, could have ramifications beyond Texas's schools and its 4.7 million students, since the state's large textbook market has traditionally led the way for others. As early as next year, students in Texas will get distinctly different history lessons that teachers, academics, and politicians on both the political right and left have condemned. The board that ushered in the standards began the day with a prayer from member Cynthia Dunbar, who said the origins of the country were those of "a Christian land governed by Christian principles." The standards say that McCarthyism in the 1950s was later vindicated (something most historians deny), draw an equivalency between Jefferson Davis's and Abraham Lincoln's inaugural addresses, say that institutions such as the United Nations imperil American sovereignty, and include a long list of Confederate officials about whom students must learn. The commerce in African captives is referred to as the "Atlantic Triangular Trade."
Read more | Related | Back to top
|
|
| Performance pay, within guidelines |
| |
In response to the scaling up of the federal Teacher Incentive Fund (TIF) program, which makes available $437 million in competitive dollars to support performance-based compensation systems, three national groups that represent teachers, district administrators, and school boards have put forward 11 principles to aid those seeking funding, Education Week reports. The guidelines from the National Education Association (NEA), the American Association of School Administrators (AASA), and the National School Boards Association (NSBA) stress cooperation among parties. The principles include evaluation systems that use multiple measures, have adequate funding, and use collective bargaining as a vehicle for designing the plans. The joint document also calls on applicants to base plans on "professional base-level salaries." According to Anne Bryant, executive director of the NSBA, this underscores the group's desire that the plans be self-sustaining rather than financed by cutting current salaries. For the NEA, the document is the latest sign of a small but significant shift in its approach to alternative-compensation systems. The union has historically opposed such systems, especially those that include consideration of student test scores.
Read more | See the guidelines | Back to top
|
|
| Teasing apart assumptions around merit pay |
| |
A common argument for teacher performance pay is straightforward -- teachers will be more motivated to do high-quality work if they know they'll get extra compensation for it -- yet little actual research exists in the field of education to prove or disprove this. In the May issue of Kappan Magazine, Chris Hulleman and Kenneth Barron examine ideas about teacher performance pay against data in other fields. For instance, in business, recent studies show that performance pay increases quantity, but not quality, of work. On the other hand, those who say that extrinsic, financial rewards undermine intrinsic motivators may also be wrong. Rewards can signify high performance quality, which increases employee confidence and intrinsic motivation, and can infuse job-related tasks with extra meaning and value. That said, quantitative measures like standardized tests as a metric for rewarding performance have obvious problems. Instead, Hulleman and Barron recommend research on the effect of subjective ratings and other qualitative performance measures to evaluate student performance. If performance pay were to have an incentive effect, they write, it would likely be due to teachers working more effectively by changing teaching and learning strategies rather than simply working more hours.
Read more | Back to top
|
|
| Further questions about Imagine Schools |
| |
A new report from Policy Matters, a Cleveland-based research institute, takes a critical look at the for-profit operation of 11 charter schools in Ohio by Imagine Schools, Inc., calling into question the poor academic performance of the schools, apparent conflicts of interest between the charters' sponsors and various contractors for the company, and complex real-estate deals that enrich the company at the expense of educational services. Since the 2005-06 school year, Imagine's 11 Ohio schools have received at least $115.7 million in state and federal dollars. None of its schools has been designated above Academic Watch by the Ohio Department of Education, the equivalent of a "D" in state ratings, since that time. Imagine also offers significantly lower salaries for teachers than other charters. In Ohio as elsewhere, Imagine school board members have resigned over what they describe as corporate disregard for the governance role, mandated by law, that charter school boards are to exercise over their schools. The report issues a series of remedies that the state can take as a way to curb potential misappropriation of public monies by for-profit charter operators.
See the report | Related | Back to top
|
|
| LIFO and poor kids |
| |
A new policy brief from the Center on Reinventing Public Education looks at the disproportionate effect that "Last-in, First-out" staffing policies have on lower-income students. A growing body of research finds that "churn" in teacher staffing has significant impact on the ability of a school to function coherently, according to the authors. With turnover, relationships are lost -- between families and teachers, teachers and teachers, and principals and teachers -- and the process of building and sustaining working relationships must begin from scratch. Site-based professional development must start over, and reassigned teachers are often unhappy in their situations, further straining relationships. Evidence consistently shows a higher concentration of new teachers in high-poverty, high-minority schools versus low-poverty, low-minority schools within the same district. Using data from the 2008-2009 school year in California (a state hit hard by budget cuts), the authors found that teachers at greatest risk of layoff were predominantly in poorer schools. The brief recommends that districts look at other policy options besides layoffs, such as wage or benefit concessions or temporary furloughs, as a way to buy time to redesign workforce reduction policies and/or improve teacher evaluations that would terminate teachers based on quality.
See the report | Related | Back to top
|
|
| High-poverty schools up five percent |
| |
A special report on high-poverty schools included in the 2010 Condition of Education study finds that the percentage of public schools where more than three quarters of students are eligible for free or reduced-price lunch has increased in the past decade, according to The Washington Post. The U.S. Department of Education found that the percent of high-poverty schools rose from 12 to 17 percent between the 1999-2000 and 2007-2008 school years, even before the current recession was fully felt. Cities were more likely to have high-poverty schools: About 40 percent of city elementary schools fell into that category in 2007-2008, compared to 15 percent in towns and 13 percent in suburbs; a similar trend was demonstrated at the secondary school level. Students at high-poverty schools are more likely to be minorities. Hispanic students, for example, made up 46 percent of students at high-poverty elementary schools and 11 percent of students at low-poverty schools in the 2007-2008 school year. White students made up 14 percent of students at high-poverty elementary schools and 75 percent at low-poverty elementary schools. High-poverty schools also have a larger percentage of students with limited English proficiency.
Read more | See the report | Back to top
|
|
| Bringing in the 'second shift' to spur graduation |
| |
In Philadelphia, a hands-on anti-dropout program with impressive results is in its second year at Feltonville Middle School of Arts and Sciences. USA TODAY profiles Diplomas Now, a program for sixth graders that assumes by high school, intervention for students at risk of dropping out is too late. Feltonville brings in "a second shift of adults" to help teachers, including a small cadre of volunteers, some as young as 18, to tutor and mentor students, entice them into after-school classes, and refer the most troubled kids and their families to social workers for mental health services, counseling, and medical care. "If you struggle all through middle school, by the time you get to high school, you've been struggling for three years, so your frustration level is very (high)," explains education researcher Robert Balfanz, one of the program's creators. "You don't have a lot of faith in the system or your ability." Using data that schools already collect (attendance, behavior, and grades in English and math), Diplomas Now creates an "early warning" spreadsheet to determine who's at greatest risk of dropping out. Poor attendance and bad behavior telegraph that a kid is in trouble, but Balfanz says failing math or English in the sixth grade is another red flag, since the two subjects are key to everything that follows.
Read more | Back to top
|
|
| School-finance reform, red versus blue |
| |
While school-finance lawsuits have attracted significant attention in the legal community, nationwide analyses of the effects of school-finance judgments (SFJs) have been relatively few, write Christopher Berry and Charles Wysong in Education Next. This small pool of studies has produced some common conclusions, namely that such judgments reduce funding inequality between districts by increasing spending in the poorest districts, and that they do so by transferring responsibility for education funding from local to state governments. Questions remain, however, as to why SFJs have substantially different effects in different states. The authors undertook an examination of how politics influences the way an SFJ alters a state's school-finance system. Their primary inquiry was whether the change in funding differs if a state has unified Democratic control of the state legislature and the governorship at the time of the court decision, unified Republican control, or when control is divided between the two. They found that reforms implemented by Democrats produce the largest net increases in funding for all students. However, by delivering roughly equivalent funding increases to districts at all income levels, Democrat-led reforms do not target new resources to districts serving poor students. Reforms implemented by divided or Republican governments deliver concentrated benefits to districts serving poor students. In these instances, however, the actual flow of new dollars into poor districts is less than when Democrats are in control.
Read more | Back to top
|
|
| Parental involvement in school fosters better social adjustment |
| |
In addition to its findings on early childhood care, the recent longitudinal study from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development determined that children whose parents were more involved across elementary school had fewer problem behaviors and better social skills, but that children's academics weren't necessarily affected, Science Daily reports. The Study of Early Childcare and Youth Development is based on information about more than 1,300 children from 10 U.S. cities who were followed from birth to fifth grade. According to the findings, when parents boosted their involvement in elementary school (by increasing visits to the school and encouraging educational progress at home), children's problem behaviors (including both aggressive and disruptive behaviors as well as anxiety and depression) decreased. At the same time, their so-called pro-social skills (such as cooperation and self-control) improved. However, the parents' involvement didn't affect children's achievement. One explanation for the absence of such associations may be that the study's measure of parents' involvement didn't focus on involvement that was specific to academic performance. The study shows that parents continue to wield considerable influence on children's development through elementary school, according to the researchers. "Therefore, the study has implications for policies to encourage involvement."
Read more | Back to top
|
|
|
|
|
| |
School really is out for summer
Across the country, districts are cutting summer school because it's too expensive to keep.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jveAtVW535QF8O-EljQJeL6tPnZAD9FSMIC80
More good news for D.C.
A federal study of trends in 11 major urban school systems shows that only D.C. Public Schools has made significant gains in reading achievement since 2007 in both fourth and eighth grades.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/05/20/AR2010052002147.html?hpid=newswell
Longitudinal data systems get a kickstart
The U.S. Department of Education has announced it will contribute $14.3 million to 20 states to help pay for the design and implementation of statewide longitudinal data systems.
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/10142/1060106-298.stm#ixzz0ownFzQGP
ELL standards left up to states
The Council of Chief State School Officers and the National Governors Association, which are coordinating the drafting of national standards, intend to leave English-language-proficiency standards up to the states.
http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2010/05/20/33common-ell.h29.html?tkn=VLBFKA7vqd8Qtz9edCWV%2BmOEidVUDOKAkxGs&cmp=clp-ecseclips
SCOTUS to scrutinize AZ tax breaks for private schools
The U.S. Supreme Court will consider ending a lawsuit that challenges Arizona's tax breaks for donations for thousands of private school scholarships, most of which go to religious schools.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hfdRpGfd8U-PjF-fWbIWIh_X2LlAD9FTDRNG0
Maryland hops on board
Maryland has become one of the first states to endorse academic standards that are part of a movement to unify reading and math instruction across the nation.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/05/25/AR2010052504424.html?hpid=sec-education |
|
| NEW GRANT AND FUNDING INFORMATION |
Public Welfare Foundation: Grants for Organizations that Serve Disadvantaged Communities
The Public Welfare Foundation supports organizations that address human needs in disadvantaged communities, with strong emphasis on organizations that include service, advocacy, and empowerment in their approach -- service that remedies specific problems; advocacy that addresses those problems in a systemic way through changes in public policy; and strategies to empower people in need to play leading roles in achieving those policy changes and in remedying specific problems. The foundation provides both general support and project-specific grants. The foundation is currently focusing on three program areas: criminal and juvenile justice, health reform, and workers' rights. Maximum award: $50,000. Eligibility: public and private entities, including nonprofit organizations and for-profit organizations. Deadline: June 26, 2010.
http://www.publicwelfare.org/ApplyGrant/Guidelines.aspx#deadlines
Finish Line Youth Foundation: Grants Program
Finish Line Youth Foundation Grants fund organizations that provide opportunities for youth participation in athletic programs promoting an active lifestyle and team-building skills, and established camps that emphasize sports and an active lifestyle, especially those serving disadvantaged and special-needs kids. Maximum award: $5,000. Eligibility: 501c(3) organizations that serve youth 18 years and younger. Deadline: June 30, 2010.
http://www.finishline.com/store/youthfoundation/youthfoundation.jsp
Dow Jones News Fund: High School Journalism Teacher of the Year
The DJNF High School Journalism Teacher of the Year program identifies outstanding high school journalism teachers. The winning teacher addresses the Journalism Education Association/National Scholastic Press Association, the Columbia Scholastic Press Association, the American Society of News Editors, and college journalism educators. Maximum award: a laptop computer; travel and lodging expenses and a per diem for substitute teacher fees during address and seminar; a quarterly column for the fund's newspaper, Adviser Update; and attendance at a seminar at the Poynter Institute for Media Studies in St. Petersburg, Fla. A senior student at the winning teacher's school will receive a $1,000 college scholarship to major in news-editorial journalism based on his or her performance in a writing contest. Eligibility: high school journalism teachers with at least three years' experience who have done exemplary work in the 2009-2010 academic year. Deadline: July 1, 2010.
https://www.newsfund.org/PageText/Prg_HomePages.aspx?Page_ID=Prg_TeacherOfTheYear
United Methodist Women: A Brighter Future Grants
The Women's Division of the United Methodist General Board of Ministries offers grants for projects and programs that address the needs of children and young people between the ages of 5 to 18 in the areas of violence prevention, anti-abuse, and relationship abuse. Maximum award: $4,000. Eligibility: small-scale, community- and church-based programs and projects. Groups affiliated with national organizations, hospitals, and organizations with budgets totaling more than $3,000,000 will not be reviewed. Deadline: July 1, 2010.
http://new.gbgm-umc.org/umw/give/grants/brighterfuture/
Broad Center for the Management of School Systems: Superintendents Academy
The Broad Center for the Management of School Systems Superintendents Academy seeks leaders from business, the military, government, education, and nonprofit organizations to make an immediate impact as CEOs and senior executives in urban school districts. Maximum award: participation in the Broad Superintendents Academy. Eligibility: those with significant leadership and management experience at the central office level or the equivalent in another field. Deadline: August 13, 2010.
http://broadacademy.org/join/leaders.html
For more grants, see http://www.publiceducation.org/newsblast_grants.asp
"If I were going to 'fabricate' a quote, why would I pick one that is so unsurprising?"
-- Steve Brill, in response to allegations by the UFT that he made up a quote he attributed to Randi Weingarten in his New York Times Magazine article, May 24, 2010
http://www.eduwonk.com/2010/05/brill-responds.html
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.
Your e-mail address is safe with the NewsBlast. It is our firm policy never to rent, loan, or sell our subscriber list to any other organization, group, or individual.
TO UPDATE OR ADD A NEWSBLAST SUBSCRIPTION
PEN wants you to receive each weekly issue of the NewsBlast at your preferred e-mail address. If you are already a subscriber and would like us to change your e-mail address, please click on "Update Profile/Email Address" near the bottom of the NewsBlast mailing.
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.
To view past issues of the PEN Weekly NewsBlast, visit http://www.publiceducation.org/newsblast_past.asp.
If you would like to submit a proposed article or news item about your local education fund, public school, or school-reform organization for a future issue of the NewsBlast, please send a note to PEN@PublicEducation.org. For the NewsBlast's submission policy, see http://www.publiceducation.org/newsblast_submission_policy.htm.
Kate Guiney
Contributing Editor
PEN Weekly NewsBlast
Public Education Network
601 Thirteenth Street, NW
Suite 710 South
Washington, DC 20005-3808
PEN@PublicEducation.org |
|
|
