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October 30, 2009 |
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| Needed: an overhaul of teacher prep |
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At a speech to Columbia University's Teachers College, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan called for a broad overhaul of the nation's teacher colleges. Duncan, as reported by the Associated Press, explained that prep programs are lucrative for the institutions that offered them, but fail to adequately prepare teachers for the classroom. Large enrollment and low overhead make them "cash cows" for universities, but profits are diverted to smaller, more prestigious departments rather than invested in research and training for would-be teachers. Duncan also faulted state governments for overly easy licensing that does not gauge classroom readiness and for failing to track which programs turn out effective teachers and which do not. If the country is to reach the president's global goal of the most college graduates by 2020, "both our K-12 system and our teacher preparation programs have to get dramatically better," said Duncan. He pointed to the administration's use of stimulus dollars to reward states that tie student achievement data to their education schools and to the demand to pay for an expansion of teacher residency programs in high-needs schools. Duncan stressed that timing is crucial. A third of veteran teachers are poised to retire, which could create a million new teaching positions over the next four years.
Read more | See the secretary's speech | Back to top
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| Cultivating a college mind-set |
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A program to cultivate a "college-going culture" has been launched in four Philadelphia schools, and it will be overseen by the Philadelphia Education Fund with underwriting by Citi Foundation, according to The Philadelphia Inquirer. The Inquirer reports that just 10 percent of those who entered the Philadelphia School District in 1997-1998 graduated with a bachelor's or associate's degree. The five-year program, which will target ninth and tenth graders, will offer a comprehensive approach that includes accompanying students on college visits, helping with applications, and providing mentors, tutoring, and financial-aid advice. "In our minds, it's the only way to create a college-going culture," said Carol Fixman, executive director of the Philadelphia Education Fund. She continued, "If you go into an affluent school, I daresay going to college is an expectation for everyone. We'd like that to be the case in city schools as well." The Philadelphia School District has recently boosted its own counseling services, especially at the city's large, troubled neighborhood high schools. The district is also requiring all high school freshmen to create "individualized learning plans" in an effort to boost graduation and college-going rates. Mayor Michael Nutter has made doubling the number of Philadelphians who earn a bachelor's degree a key priority of his administration.
Read more | Back to top
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| Standing tall on ed reform |
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Though it is currently fashionable to say the president has accomplished little during his term in office, one area where this is unjustified is education, writes moderate conservative columnist David Brooks of The New York Times. Instead, the Obama administration has ushered in a "quiet revolution" for the nation's public schools, successfully challenging the status quo and prompting stakeholders to reposition themselves. As Brooks observes, people across the political spectrum have been "impressed by how gritty and effective the Obama administration has been in holding the line and inciting real education reform." The Race to the Top fund has spurred states to change laws, lift caps on charter schools, and start "cracking the barrier that has been erected between student outcomes and teacher pay." The administration has also been successful in persuading the reluctant teacher unions to participate in the reform process. The next few months, Brooks writes, will be marked by challenges to this progress. Groups will offer to back healthcare reform in exchange for weakening education reform, and politicians will lobby for RttT money, regardless of their state's merit. No matter though, the president has "understood from the start that this would only work if the awards remain fiercely competitive. He has not wavered."
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| 'Platooning' for in-depth content instruction |
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In districts across the country, a noticeable number of elementary schools have adopted departmentalization -- whereby teachers with a deeper knowledge of a certain subject teach that subject -- in some cases for children as young as six, reports The Harvard Education Letter. Though middle and high schools have historically "platooned," elementary schools have long been the province of one-teacher-per-classroom, with teachers trained as generalists who spend the entire year with one group of about 25 kids and teach them a range of subjects. However, the era of testing has put new pressures on teacher performance and student outcomes. While the data are not conclusive on platooning, some say they are promising. "We have a large-scale teacher education problem in this country," says Deborah Ball, dean of the School of Education at the University of Michigan and a member of the National Mathematics Advisory Panel. She says that when standards are raised, it's not just the students who are affected; teachers must also acquire new skills in order to teach to those standards. In her view, departmentalizing is a cost-neutral way of upgrading instruction because no additional teachers need to be hired and professional development can instead be focused on fewer teachers.
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| Combining teachers to build on their differences |
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The goals of a new wave of timely reforms -- recruiting more talent into the teaching profession, and raising stakes and incentives for existing teachers, especially in high need schools -- are worthy, in the view a report from Education Sector, but they are destined to fail without a fundamental overhaul of the way teachers' work is organized within schools. Today, most teachers' work is isolated and fragmented, with no defined pathways for career development, few mechanisms for feedback, and a schedule disconnected from the reality of what teachers actually do and what students actually need. A new model developed by Furman Brown and his colleagues and piloted at the Brooklyn Generation public high school in New York City organizes teachers into grade and subject-based teams, designed to blend different types of expertise and levels of experience. The daily schedule and calendar are designed with time for regular and ongoing teacher collaboration and planning, giving teachers "time to learn from each other and to learn from their work," Brown says. "We get the best teachers we can. But then what do we do with them? We combine them, build on their differences."
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| Common ground or cause for dissent? |
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Fatherhood is a subject about which President Obama has said he has strong personal feelings, reports The Christian Science Monitor, and is also an area that the political right has designated as a major concern. A new federal initiative to strengthen American schools could provide common ground between the administration and some of its adversaries, since it focuses on the role of fathers and the need for parents to take personal responsibility for the success of their children, according to the paper. Since Father's Day, members of the Obama administration have been on tour meeting with neighborhood leaders -- from school superintendents to prison ministers to administrators of not-for-profit groups -- to determine who and what are already doing a good job of filling "father" needs in the lives of children, a role that experts agree is critically important to the academic success of a child. But the initiative has given conservatives pause, according to The Monitor, since any expansion of the federal role raises concern. "Potentially, it could be a case of the government helping where help is not needed," says Chuck Donovan, senior research fellow for the Heritage Foundation in Washington. Such programs are "not a core competence of our schools," in his view.
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| Principal 'churn' and high-poverty schools |
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A new study from the University of Texas finds that only half of newly hired Texas public school principals stay on the job at least three years, with those in high-poverty schools leaving soonest. These data can be extrapolated to other states, and show that principal retention rates are strongly influenced by student achievement during the principal's first year, with the lowest-achieving schools having the highest principal turnover. The number of poorer students in a school is also a major determinant, with more than 20 percent of principals in the highest-poverty schools leaving after only one year and less than 30 percent staying at the same school at least five years. Retention is higher in suburban districts where most students are white and affluent, and is highest overall in elementary schools. "A good deal of research has been done on teacher retention," said Dr. Ed Fuller, a member of the University Council for Educational Administration and a co-author of the study, "but not so much on principals. What we know about principal retention suggests that school leaders are crucial to the school improvement process and that they must stay in a school a number of consecutive years for the benefits of their leadership to be realized."
Read more | See the report | Related | Back to top
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| Parents win new power in LAUSD |
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Under a new plan, parents in Los Angeles can initiate major reforms at low-performing individual schools rather than wait for the district to make changes, reports the Los Angeles Times. This new parental power is part of a school-control resolution that allows groups inside and outside the Los Angeles Unified School District to take over campuses. Supt. Ramon C. Cortines has designated 12 underachieving schools and 18 new campuses for the process, but the parent option could apply to other district schools in future years. Under Cortines' plan, a majority of parents at a school could trigger reforms at a local campus, and parents whose students are matriculating from one school to another could also take part. Critics have complained, however, that the resolution does not go far enough, and think parents of young children should have the right to set in motion changes to that child's future school, say a middle or high school, since reforms take so long to implement. Cortines overruled this idea, however, saying he did not want the views of parents with children currently attending a school trumped by those of parents without children enrolled, especially those who might be ill-informed. He has also indicated he is open to allowing a majority of a school's staff to initiate reforms.
Read more | Back to top
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| Daily jailing data for young black male dropouts shows one in five |
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A new study from the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University details the high cost of the dropout epidemic for both students and taxpayers. The paper outlines data for the employment, earnings, incarceration, teen and young adult parenting, and family incomes of the nation's high school dropouts and their better-educated peers from 2006 to 2008, and the news is not good. The most startling statistic, contained in the report's subtitle, indicates a 22 percent daily jailing rate for young black men who have dropped out. Overall, nearly one of every 10 young male high school dropouts was institutionalized on a given day in 2006-2007, versus fewer than one of 33 high school graduates, one of 100 young men who completed one to three years of post-secondary schooling, and only one of 500 men who held a bachelor's or higher degree. Other data show young female high school dropouts nearly nine times as likely to become single mothers as their counterparts with bachelor degrees, with the year-round joblessness rate of young high school dropouts at 40 percent. Over their working lives, the average high school dropout will have a negative net fiscal contribution to society of nearly -$5,200, while the average high school graduate generates a positive lifetime net fiscal contribution of $287,000.
See the report | Back to top
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| Arts education boosts graduation |
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A study from the Center for Arts Education looks at the relationship between school-based arts education and high school graduation rates in New York City public schools, and concludes the arts play a key role in keeping students in high school and graduating on time. Analyzing data from more than 200 New York City schools over a two-year period, the report found that schools in the top third in graduation rates offered students the most access to arts education and the most resources that support arts education. Schools in the bottom third in graduation rates consistently offer the least access and fewest resources. This pattern held true for nine key indicators that researchers felt conveyed a school's commitment to arts education: certified arts teachers, dedicated arts classrooms, appropriately equipped arts classrooms, arts and cultural partnerships, external funds to support the arts, coursework in the arts, access to multi-year arts sequence, school sponsorship of arts participation, and school sponsorship of arts field trips. "Beyond the traditional benefits that an arts education provides," the report states, "the arts cut across learning styles and language barriers and engage students who might otherwise be uninterested in school and on a path to dropping out."
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An appreciation of Theodore Sizer
Mr. Sizer, a reformer who placed a premium on classroom creativity, bottom-up innovation and multiple measures of student learning, died at his home on October 21.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/22/AR2009102204839.html?hpid=moreheadlines
Sing, Muse, of floods and FEMA
Students in New Orleans write about Katrina in epic format to learn about ancient poetry.
http://www.nola.com/education/index.ssf/2009/10/post_25.html
Languishing in ELL in LA
Almost 30 percent of those placed early on in English Language Learner classes in LAUSD were still in them when they started high school, study finds.
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-english29-2009oct29,0,108049.story
From bad to worse
A report on the controversial closures of low-performing and under-enrolled Chicago schools shows little effect on student achievement, mostly because many of the students from such schools were placed in other failing schools.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/education/chi-school-closings-report-28-oct28,0,1860641.story |
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| NEW GRANT AND FUNDING INFORMATION |
Tylenol: The Terri Lynne Lokoff/Children's Tylenol National Child Care Teacher Awards
The Terri Lynne Lokoff/Children's Tylenol National Child Care Teacher Awards acknowledge the critical role of childcare teachers in providing quality early care and education. Applicants are asked to design an enhancement project for the children in their classroom illustrating the educational, social, and emotional benefits from the project. Maximum award: $1,000. Eligibility: teachers of infant, toddler, or preschool age children employed in a home, group, or center-based program that is fully compliant with local and state regulations for operating child care programs. Deadline: December 4, 2009.
http://www.tllccf.org/pr_nccta.php
Honeywell: Educators at Space Academy
The Honeywell Educators at Space Academy Program funds five-day scholarships for middle school math and science teachers at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville, Al. Recipients have 40 hours of intensive classroom, laboratory, and training time, focusing on space science and space exploration, including participation in astronaut-style training and simulations and activities designed to promote life-long learning in a classroom setting. Maximum award: travel, accommodations, materials and five-day tuition. Eligibility: middle school (grades 6-8) science and math teachers.
Deadline: December 31, 2009.
http://www51.honeywell.com/hhs/ourprograms-sub/scimathedu-sub/honeywelledu.html?c=31
American Historical Association: Beveridge Family Teaching Prize
The American Historical Association Beveridge Family Teaching Prize recognizes excellence and innovation in elementary, middle school, and secondary history teaching, including career contributions and specific initiatives. Maximum award: $1,500. Eligibility: K-12 teachers in groups. Deadline: March 15, 2010.
http://www.historians.org/teaching/Beveridge.htm
MIT: Lemelson-MIT 2011 InvenTeams
Lemelson-MIT InvenTeams foster inventiveness among high school students. InvenTeams composed of high school students, teachers, and mentors are asked to collaboratively identify a problem that they want to solve, research the problem, and then develop a prototype invention as an in-class or extracurricular project. Maximum award: $10,000. Eligibility: high school science, mathematics and technology teachers -- or teams of teachers -- at public, private and vocational schools; intra- and inter-school collaborations welcome. Deadline: April 25, 2010.
http://web.mit.edu/inventeams/about.html
For more grants, see http://www.publiceducation.org/newsblast_grants.asp
"Education is the greatest gift a government can bestow upon society."
-- former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, in an address to the Center for American Progress, October 28, 2009
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