cation in the Shreveport-Bossier City area is on the dawn of a new era, but barriers at the local and state levels could stifle the potential for improvement, new local education leaders said.
“What education will look like in 10 to 15 years will not be recognizable to many of us because of the ways it will be delivered and ways we will be cooperating,” said Centenary College President B. David Rowe. “The ones who don’t cooperate, the ones who don’t change, the ones who don’t collaborate will be left behind.”
Rowe, Caddo schools Superintendent Gerald Dawkins, Bossier schools Superintendent D.C. Machen and Bossier Parish Community College Chancellor Jim Henderson are among the area’s newest educational leaders. Between them, they are responsible for educating about 70,000 students.
They all have vast experiences in education from working with the state’s technical and community colleges to more than 30 years in the same local school system. All four leaders, however, are relatively new to their positions — ranging from a few weeks to about one year on the job.
Lowe and Behold
The controversial (Texas) State Board of Education has a new chair. Here’s how she can keep it from becoming the State Board of Embarrassment.
The State Board of Education is the most dysfunctional agency in Texas government. This is quite an achievement, considering the competition: the Texas Department of Insurance, which allows the highest home insurance rates in the land; the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, which changes names every few years but not its polluter-friendly policies; the Public Utility Commission, whose chairman, responding to a petition this summer to prohibit electric utilities from disconnecting low-income and elderly customers until the heat wave broke, argued that it wasn’t really unusually hot. And let us not forget the Texas Department of Transportation, which can’t abide the idea of a highway without a tollbooth on it.
But there is nothing like the idiosyncratic, bitterly divided SBOE, whose fifteen elected members are charged with overseeing public education in Texas. They decide what Texas schoolchildren are supposed to learn. They establish statewide curriculum standards. They determine whether textbooks include the required material. They set graduation requirements. They are responsible for investing the Permanent School Fund, the endowment for the public schools. They accept or reject requests to establish innovative charter schools. At least, that’s what the SBOE is supposed to do. What it has really done, for two decades or more, is argue incessantly over peripheral issues: the theory of evolution, sex education, role models for women.
For the past sixty years, the board has been composed of people from the education community: school board members, teachers, administrators. They have operated in relative obscurity and discharged their duties in a routine way. About the only time the SBOE made news was when critics like Mel and Norma Gabler, of Longview, began showing up at meetings to complain that textbooks under consideration had a liberal, anti-Christian point of view. But by the nineties, a new group of conservatives, many motivated by their religious beliefs, targeted the board for a takeover. They have been so successful that today they are the majority faction, and the SBOE has become the front line of the culture wars in Texas.
Dream of a Common Language. Sueño de un Idioma Común.
The graduates of a radical bilingual education program at Alicia R. Chacón International, in El Paso, would have no trouble reading either of these headlines. What can they teach the rest of us about the future of Texas?
On (En) a warm spring morning in east El Paso, I watched a science teacher named Yvette Garcia wrap duct tape around the wrists of one of her best students. We were in a tidy lab room on the first floor of Del Valle High School, in the Ysleta Independent School District, about two miles from the border in a valley once covered with cotton and onion fields but long since swallowed up by the sprawl of El Paso. Garcia taped a second student around the ankles, bound a third around the elbows, and so on, until she had temporarily handicapped a half-dozen giggling teenagers, whom she then cheerfully goaded into a footrace followed by a peanut-eating contest. It was a demonstration of the scientific concept of genetic mutation–or at least I think it was. The lab was taught entirely in Spanish, and my limited skills didn’t allow me to follow a discussion of an advanced academic concept. But these kids could grasp the lesson equally well in Spanish or in English, because they had been taught–most of them since elementary school–using a cutting-edge bilingual education program known as dual language.
In traditional bilingual classes, learning English is the top priority. The ultimate aim is to move kids out of non-English-speaking classrooms as quickly as possible. Students in dual language classes, on the other hand, are encouraged to keep their first language as they learn a second. And Ysleta’s program, called two-way dual language, is even more radical, because kids who speak only English are also encouraged to enroll. Everyone sits in the same classroom. Spanish-speaking kids are expected to help the English speakers in the early grades, which are taught mostly in Spanish. As more and more English is introduced into the classes, the roles are reversed. Even the teachers admit it can look like chaos to an outsider. “Dual language classes are very loud,” said Steven Vizcaino, who was an early student in the program and who graduated from Del Valle High in June. “Everyone is talking to everyone.”
Schools Boost Science, Math With Hands-On Teaching
To answer the age-old question “When am I going to use this?,” school systems in Calvert, Charles and St. Mary’s counties are working to enrich their science, technology, engineering and mathematics programs by using hands-on teaching, guest speakers and real-world experiments and applications.
Charles is expanding its Gateway to Technology to all middle schools after a successful pilot program last year, school system spokeswoman Katie O’Malley-Simpson said. The program is part of the nationally recognized Project Lead the Way curriculum, which supports engineering and science.
“It focuses on showing, rather than telling, students how to use engineering in everyday problems,” O’Malley-Simpson said. “They see that because they are applying their skills as they learn them.”
What Teachers Have Learned
In a Room for Debate forum this week, experts discussed the value of education degrees, which often drive pay and promotion in public school systems. Many readers, who are teachers, offered their views on whether teacher prep programs are necessary for the classroom, or if other factors, like subject-matter expertise and life experience, matter more. Here are excerpts from their comments.
The Value of Epiphanies
I teach high school English and journalism, and have for more than twenty years. The students in my journalism classes are among the highest achieving students in the school; traditionally more than half of the top ten students each year are in enrolled in my classes. During the summer and after school I teach remedial English skills to students who did not pass our state standardized test.
To evaluate and pay teachers according to student performance based on standardized test scores will not produce better teachers, or better students. If a teacher helps a non-reader to become a reader, if a teacher helps a student realize the value of knowing how to write well, if a teacher opens up just a small window for further learning to occur, he is a fine teacher. Extra pay is not given to teachers who provide epiphanies and a foundation for lifelong learning. How sad it would be to give extra pay to teachers who turn out top-notch standardized test-takers.
— Pamela
US Students are Average on International Tests
Major findings include:
Reading
In PIRLS 2006, the average U.S. 4th-graders’ reading literacy score (540) was above the PIRLS scale average of 500, but below that of 4th-graders in 10 of the 45 participating countries, including 3 Canadian provinces (Russian Federation, Hong Kong, Alberta, British Columbia, Singapore, Luxembourg, Ontario, Hungary, Italy, and Sweden).
Among the 28 countries that participated in both the 2001 and 2006 PIRLS assessments, the average reading literacy score increased in 8 countries and decreased in 6 countries. In the rest of these countries, including the United States, there was no measurable change in the average reading literacy score between 2001 and 2006. The number of these countries that outperformed the United States increased from 3 in 2001 to 7 in 2006.
Mathematics
The 2007 TIMSS results showed that U.S. students’ average mathematics score was 529 for 4th-graders and 508 for 8th-graders. Both scores were above the TIMSS scale average, which is set at 500 for every administration of TIMSS at both grades, and both were higher than the respective U.S. score in 1995.
Fourth-graders in 8 of the 35 other countries that participated in 2007 (Hong Kong, Singapore, Chinese Taipei, Japan, Kazakhstan, Russian Federation, England, and Latvia) scored above their U.S. peers, on average; and 8th-graders in 5 of the 47 other countries that participated in 2007 (Chinese Taipei, Korea, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Japan) scored above their U.S. peers, on average.
Among the 16 countries that participated in both the first TIMSS in 1995 and the most recent TIMSS in 2007, at grade 4, the average mathematics score increased in 8 countries, including in the United States, and decreased in 4 countries. Among the 20 countries that participated in both the 1995 and 2007 TIMSS at grade 8, the average mathematics score increased in 6 countries, including in the United States, and decreased in 10 countries.
In PISA 2006, U.S. 15-year-old students’ average mathematics literacy score of 474 was lower than the OECD average of 498, and placed U.S. 15-year-olds in the bottom quarter of participating OECD nations, a relative position unchanged from 2003.
Fifteen-year-old students in 23 of the 29 other participating OECD-member countries outperformed their U.S. peers.
There was no measurable change in U.S. 15-year-olds’ average mathematics literacy score between 2003 and 2006, in its relationship to the OECD average, or in its relative position to the countries whose scores increased or decreased.
Science
The 2007 TIMSS results showed that U.S. students’ average science score was 539 for 4th-graders and 520 for 8th-graders. Both scores were above the TIMSS scale average, which is set at 500 for every administration of TIMSS at both grades, but neither was measurably different than the respective U.S. score in 1995.
Fourth-graders in 4 of the 35 other countries that participated in 2007 (Singapore, Chinese Taipei, Hong Kong, and Japan) scored above their U.S. peers, on average; and 8th-graders in 9 of the 47 other countries that participated in 2007 (Singapore, Chinese Taipei, Japan, Korea, England, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovenia, and the Russian Federation) scored above their U.S. peers, on average.
While there was no measurable change in the average score of U.S. 4th-graders or 8th-graders in science between 1995 and 2007, among the other 15 countries that participated in the 1995 and 2007 TIMSS at grade 4, the average science score increased in 7 countries and decreased in 5 countries; and among the other 18 countries that participated in both the 1995 and 2007 TIMSS at grade 8, the average science score increased in 5 countries and decreased in 3 countries.
In PISA 2006, U.S. 15-year-old students’ average science literacy score of 489 was lower than the OECD average of 500, and placed U.S. 15-year-olds in the bottom third of participating OECD nations. Fifteen-year-old students in 16 of the 29 other participating OECD-member countries outperformed their U.S. peers in terms of average scores.
Technical notes about the data sources, methodology, and standard errors are included at the end of this report.
Joanne has more.
Cost of education too high when result is ignorance
If, as Aristotle said, “Education is the best provision for old age,” there is not much ahead for an increasing number of college graduates.
I don’t know what is happening, but grading student exams and college papers is becoming a chore, not the pleasant learning experience it used to be. Every semester seems to prove that more and more students should not be in college because they simply don’t care and/or don’t have the skills to take and pass courses at any level.
Plagiarism is a huge problem. It seems that every take-home exam and paper is an invitation to googling. Then, the procedure is as simple as “cut and paste,” usually from Wikipedia but, if more creative, from the first 10 hits. Some students don’t even bother to change fonts or formatting. Some plagiarized my own writing! Others invest their time in one general paper that ends up in a variety of courses regardless of the topic assigned.
After an initial denial, “I didn’t do it!” that takes an instructor 10 minutes to 10 days to prove otherwise (university procedures), the next customary response is either “I didn’t know,” or “I do it all the time and other professors have no problem with my work.”
Wolfram|Alpha Chemistry 101
This week the American Chemical Society (ACS) is holding its Fall 2009 National Meeting & Exposition in Washington, DC, USA. In honor of professional chemists, educators, and students, we’re celebrating chemistry this week. If you are attending the meeting and would like a personal introduction to Wolfram|Alpha or the technology behind it, drop by the Wolfram Research booth, #2101.
Wolfram|Alpha contains a wealth of chemistry data, and provides you rapid computations that ensure accuracy and save time. Wolfram|Alpha is also an incredible learning tool, especially for new chemistry students looking for ways to learn, understand, compare, and test their knowledge of chemistry basics. Many of the topic areas found on an introductory or advanced course syllabus can be explored in Wolfram|Alpha.
Need to compute how many moles are in 5 grams of iron? Query “how many moles are in 5 grams of iron?”, and Wolfram|Alpha quickly computes your input and returns a result, along with unit conversions.
NEA Slams Obama’s School Reform Plan
Here’s a dispatch from my colleague Nick Anderson on the national education beat:
The nation’s largest teachers union sharply attacked President Obama’s most significant school improvement initiative on Friday evening, saying that it puts too much emphasis on a “narrow agenda” centered on charter schools and echoes the Bush administration’s “top-down approach” to reform.
The National Education Association’s criticism of Obama’s $4.35 billion “Race to the Top” initiative came nearly a month after the president unveiled the competitive grant program, meant to spur states to move toward teacher performance pay; lift caps on independently operated, publicly funded charter schools; and take other steps to shake up school systems.
The NEA’s statement to the Department of Education came a week before the end of the public-comment period on the administration’s proposal, and it reflected deep divisions over the White House’s education agenda within a constituency largely loyal to the Democratic Party.
Jeff Raikes talks about first year as Gates Foundation CEO
Jeff Raikes has kept a pretty low profile in his first year as chief executive of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The man who built Microsoft Office now runs the largest private foundation in the world, which gives out more than $3 billion a year from an endowment of $30 billion.
Raikes recently talked about the fallout of the economic crisis on the foundation, the importance of risk taking and failure in philanthropy, and his experience working with Melinda Gates, which he said has been the most fun. He spoke at a breakfast last week sponsored by the Puget Sound Business Journal. (I couldn’t get in, but thanks to the Seattle Channel I was able to watch it here).
Not a lot of what he said was new, but he did reveal some insights from his first year, including how serious the stock market plunge hit the Gates Foundation.
“The biggest impact by far is on our partners and the people that our partners and we strive to serve,” he said. “It’s one of those things if you think about it you get a little depressed.”
Wisconsin again rated poorly in efforts to improve schools
There it was again last week: A chart from a reputable national education organization that put Wisconsin at the top of the list, provided you were standing on your head.
The New Teacher Project, a private, nonprofit organization that has done a lot of work with Wisconsin and Milwaukee education, created a scorecard of the chances of each state to win some of the $4.35 billion to be given out by the U.S. Department of Education to places where there are bold, well structured plans to improve low-performing schools.
Wisconsin had the worst scorecard of all 51 candidates (including the District of Columbia).
A few weeks ago, there was a report from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, a program created by the federal government, on the racial gaps in reading and math achievement for fourth- and eighth-graders. The gaps were generally wider in Wisconsin than anywhere else. The scores of African-American students were lower in Wisconsin than in any other state – Mississippi, Louisiana, you name it.
A couple of years ago, Education Sector, a nonprofit organization, rated the states on how they were dealing with the No Child Left Behind education law. Wisconsin was rated as doing the best job in the country of evading the consequences of the law. The organization called it the Pangloss index, after a fictional character who believed everything was in its best possible condition even when it wasn’t. We were the most Panglossian state, so to speak.
Schwarzenegger’s plan would reshape education in California
The state’s powerful teachers unions criticize the governor’s sweeping proposals, including merit pay for teachers. The plan would help qualify the state for Obama administration funds.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger called on legislators Thursday to adopt sweeping education reforms that would dramatically reshape California’s public education system and qualify the state for competitive federal school funding.
The governor’s proposed legislation, to be considered during a special session that ends by Oct. 5, was met almost immediately by criticism from the powerful state teacher unions, which called Schwarzenegger’s plans rushed and unnecessary.
While Schwarzenegger’s goal is to boost California’s chances to qualify for $4.35 billion in federal grants, known as “Race to the Top,” many of his proposals go far beyond those needed for eligibility, and embrace the Obama administration’s key education reform proposals.
Schwarzenegger’s reforms include:
- Adopting a merit pay system that would reward effective teachers and give them incentives to work at low-performing campuses;
- Abolishing the current cap on the number of charter schools that can open every year;
- Forcing school districts to shut down or reconstitute the lowest-performing schools or turn them over to charter schools’ independent management;
- Allowing students at low-performing campuses to transfer to a school of their choosing;
- Requiring school districts to consider student test data when evaluating teachers, something the federal government believes is prohibited under state law.
Michelle Rhee in Washington, DC
Jane Renaud, Cat McGrath & David Wald:
The lack of sustained leadership has plagued the Washington, DC public school system for decades. Our nation’s capital, home to fifty thousand students, boasts one of the worst school districts in the country. Two thirds of students are far behind in reading, in math, three quarters.
In June 2007 new mayor Adrian Fenty assumed control of the ailing school system, firing the incumbent superintendent and replacing him with Michelle Rhee. Some questioned her lack of experience managing a public school system. Others felt she was exactly what was needed – a change agent from outside the district. In July the city council unanimously voted her in. Since then she has plotted a deliberate, and frequently controversial, course.
This series follows Michelle Rhee’s attempts to reform one of the most challenged school districts in America. Can Rhee provide a model of reform for the entire country, delivering on her promise of an excellent education for every child?
Tech tips for term time
Over the next month or so, high school and college students across the world will return to the classroom or begin higher education courses for the first time.
In the past they would have taken pens, paper and textbooks but today’s backpacks are laden with laptops, smartphones and other electronic devices.
The choice facing students and their parents is often bewildering so I set out to sift through the options and identify some of my favourite devices for the next generation of scholars.
When my eldest children went to university a decade ago they took with them a desktop PC, printer and a cheap mobile phone. But today most students prefer a laptop for everyday use, and perhaps an all-in-one machine for the dorm along with a multi-function printer, copier and scanner. For communications they want Skype or another low-cost messaging service such as SightSpeed or ooVoo .
In terms of handsets, bragging rights go to those packing a latest-generation smartphone such as Apple’s iPhone, BlackBerry’s Curve, or HTC’s Google Android-powered Magic. Alternatively, students want a text-centric handset with a full qwerty-keyboard such as Nokia’s N97 or the Windows Mobile-powered Danger Sidekick .
Adding Personality to the College Admissions Mix
For years, colleges have asked applicants for their grade-point averages and standardized test scores.
Now, schools like Boston College, DePaul University and Tufts University also want to measure prospective students’ personalities.
Using recently developed evaluation systems, these schools and others are aiming to quantify so-called noncognitive traits such as leadership, resilience and creativity. Colleges say such assessments are boosting the admissions chances for some students who might not have qualified based solely on grades and traditional test scores. The noncognitive assessments also are being used to screen out students believed to be at a higher risk of dropping out, and to identify newly admitted students who might need extra tutoring.
Big nonprofits that administer standardized admissions tests, including the College Board, the Educational Testing Service and ACT Inc., are also getting in on the trend. ETS, for instance, which administers the Graduate Record Examination, or GRE, recently unveiled a “personal potential index” designed for schools that want to replace traditional letters of recommendation for prospective grad students with a standardized rating.
“There is quite a bit of demand for these [noncognitive] instruments,” says David Hawkins, director of public policy for the National Association of College Admissions Counseling. Educators say the use of such assessments is likely to grow as some schools search for new tools to recruit more minority and low-income students. At the same time, budget pressures are forcing public institutions in states like California and Florida to find new tools for selecting incoming students.
U.S. vs. China: Thoughtful Chinese Author Says U.S. Schools are Better
In my debates with American high-tech entrepreneur Bob Compton, I argue that U.S. schools are way ahead of the Chinese, and likely to stay there, at least in the production of creative, job-producing go-getters like Bob. Bob says I am not seeing what a great threat the rapidly improving Chinese education system is to our global economic superiority. Now we have a new book, “Catching Up or Leading the Way: American Education in the Age of Globalization,” by someone who knows more about this than either Bob or me: Michigan State education professor Yong Zhao.
Just one of his chapters, number 4, “Why China Isn’t a Threat Yet,” is worth the $27 cost of the book. Born and raised in China himself, Zhao (pronounced Jow) describes in detail what our schools are doing well, and not so well, and does the same with China. He concludes that we are still ahead in developing creative thinkers. The Chinese won’t be able to catch up until they do something about—don’t laugh–their awful college entrance tests.
A Partial Look (School Climate) at the Outbound Madison School District Parent Survey
Madison school district parents dissatisfied with local schools got a boost after a 2007 U.S. Supreme Court decision which trumped state law and made it easier for students living in the district to attend schools in other districts, a practice known as open enrollment.
The case was brought by Seattle parents who challenged the use of race in assigning students to schools, arguing it violated the Constitution’s right of equal protection. The ruling was celebrated by those who favor color-blind policies, but criticized by civil rights groups as a further erosion of Brown vs. Board of Education, the landmark 1954 case that outlawed school segregation.
Last year it became easier in Madison, and in school districts across the country, for white students to transfer even if it meant increasing the district’s racial imbalance.
After a flood of local students left the district last year, Madison Superintendent Dan Nerad decided to investigate why.
“We had an interest in knowing ideas from people that had made the decision for open enrollment,” Nerad says. “We are attempting to learn from those experiences to see if there are some things as a school district that we can constructively do to address those concerns.”
To that end, the district surveyed households of district residents who left Madison schools and transferred to another district for the 2008-09 school year to find out why the families left. The majority of parents who took their kids out of the Madison school district last year under open enrollment said they did so for what the district classifies as “environmental reasons”: violence, gangs, drugs and negative peer pressure. Other reasons were all over the map. Many cited crowded classrooms and curriculum that wasn’t challenging enough.
Only a few responses pointed directly to white flight.
The Private/Parochial, Open Enrollment Leave, Open Enrollment Enter, Home Based Parent Survey, including School Board discussion, can be found here. David Blask comments.
2009-2010 Read On Wisconsin Book Club Reading List
Via email:
Dear Read On Wisconsin! Book Club Members,
Welcome to the 2009-2010 school year!
We are pleased to announce that we have finalized the book selections! Thanks to the hard work of our Literacy Advisory Committee (LAC), we have decided on wonderful collections for all age groups. Each submission was carefully considered, and we feel that our assortment features inspiring books that will both enrich and entertain students. We think that you will all be very pleased with these engaging and inspiring choices!
We look forward to hosting Reading Days at the Residence this upcoming school year. Please check this website often for dates and details. We remind you that for each book, the LAC has developed discussion questions. Please encourage your students to be active participants in the student web log. As always, we welcome any questions or feedback regarding the book club or Reading Days.
On Wisconsin!
Jessica Doyle
First Lady of Wisconsin
Ashley Huibregtse
Assistant to the First Lady
Performance Management in Portfolio School Districts
Robin Lake & Paul Hill, via a Deb Britt email:
Under pressure from state standards-based reform and No Child Left Behind, and with increasing competition from schools of choice, urban school districts are looking for ways to offer a high-performing mix of schools that meet the diverse needs of their communities.
Many districts see themselves as portfolio managers, operating some schools in the traditional way, hiring independent groups to run other schools, and holding all schools accountable under the same performance standards.
Portfolio management requires school districts to do three things they were not designed to do: judge the performance of individual schools, decide which are effective enough to continue supporting, and decide whether to shore up struggling schools or create new ones. Districts currently adopting a portfolio strategy, partially or fully, include New York, Chicago, New Orleans, Denver, Philadelphia, Hartford, and the District of Columbia. Many other districts are considering the strategy.
Performance Management in Portfolio School Districts provides ideas for portfolio school districts and others that are trying to manage schools for performance. Based on studies of other government agencies and businesses that have shifted from inputs- to performance-based accountability, this report:
Complete report: 1.3MB PDF.
South Park meets Harvard Business School
Sometimes you aim for the moon and get surprisingly close. This summer I’m at Nasa Ames research centre in California, attending Singularity University, a new institution that aims to educate “a cadre of leaders” about the rapid pace of technology and to address humanity’s grand challenges, such as climate and health (www.singularityu.org).
The university is the brainchild of Peter Diamandis, who founded the X-Prize challenge to encourage private spaceflight, and Ray Kurzweil, a futurist in exponential technologies. It is supported by Google, Nasa and ePlanet Ventures.
I’m part of the inaugural “student” class of 40 entrepreneurs and scientists from around the world, selected from more than 1,200 applications.
The nine-week course promises lectures and discussions with some of the world’s best technologists (such as internet pioneers Vint Cerf and Bob Metcalfe), Nobel laureates and NGO leaders to share ideas, undertake practical experiments and build businesses. The goal is ambitious – to work out how technology could help a billion people within 10 years.
Arriving at the campus, housed on Federal land, I pass through the nearby town of Mountain View, which is adorned with university flags emblazoned with messages such as “How would you feed a billion people?”
Families, Activists Rally to Restore 216 Rescinded Washington, DC Tuition Vouchers
Classes in District public schools start Monday, and 216 students are hoping they won’t have to go back. About 70 parents, children and activists joined Thursday in front of the U.S. Department of Education to encourage Secretary of Education Arne Duncan to award vouchers to help the students pay for private school.
The students, who were offered vouchers worth as much as $7,500 toward tuition from the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program this spring before Duncan rescinded them in the face of the program’s uncertain future, were left to find placements in public and charter schools. Some families have complained that by the time the vouchers were rolled back, there were few spots available at competitive public schools.
“We’re hoping that Secretary Duncan is going to look out the window so he can see how strongly the parents support it,” said Virginia Walden Ford, executive director of D.C. Parents for School Choice, one of the groups that organized the protest. “They just put families into a bad situation.”
Lost in Immersion: Speaking French on the Web
If you’ve ever learned a foreign language, you know the vast difference between completing workbook activities and speaking with others. The latter experience can involve sounding out unfamiliar accents or guttural pronunciations and, though intimidating, is ultimately more rewarding. By immersing yourself in a language and navigating through situations, you learn how to speak and eventually think in that language.
Rosetta Stone has long used visual learning without translations by pairing words with images –one of the ways a baby learns to speak. For the past week, I’ve been testing its newest offering: Rosetta Stone Totale (pronounced toe-tall-A), which is the company’s first fully Web-based language-learning program. It aims to immerse you in a language using three parts: online coursework that can take up to 150 hours; live sessions in which you can converse over the Web with a native-speaking coach and other students; and access to Rosetta World, a Web-based community where you can play language games by yourself or with other students to improve your skills.
Totale costs a whopping $999, so if you aren’t serious about learning a language it’s a tough sell. Rosetta Stone says this program is comparable to an in-country language-immersion school. The company’s most expensive offering before Totale was a set of CDs (lessons one, two and three) that cost $549, included about 120 hours of course work and had no online components.
Wisconsin Ranks 3rd in ACT Testing
Wisconsin maintained its third-place ranking on the ACT college admissions test, with this year’s graduating high school seniors posting an average composite score of 22.3 for the third year in a row, according to data scheduled to be released Wednesday.
That average placed Wisconsin behind only Minnesota and Iowa among states where the ACT was taken by a majority of the Class of 2009.
But within the state’s scores were causes for concern. The average composite score – the combined performance on the ACT’s English, math, reading and science tests – for African-American students fell from 17 to 16.8. With the average composite score for Wisconsin’s white students at 22.9, the state had one of the largest gaps between the two racial groups in the nation.
According to a report from ACT Inc., such scores indicate only 3% of the state’s African-American test-takers are ready for college in all four tested areas, compared with 33% of white students. In Milwaukee Public Schools, spokeswoman Roseann St. Aubin said 6% of district test-takers were deemed college-ready in all four areas.
“Overall, Wisconsin students did well on this national test,” state schools Superintendent Tony Evers said in a news release. “However, the results show areas for improvement.”
Average composite scores on the ACT, the most popular of the two main college admissions tests in Wisconsin, varied from district to district in the Milwaukee area.
Because the ACT is a voluntary test, schools’ average scores can vary based on the number of students who take it from one year to the next. An increase in test-taking usually leads to a score drop.
Search for teachers goes overseas
School districts from Maryland to California are turning their focus outside the United States to fill certain teaching jobs. Gigi Douban reports from Birmingham, Ala.
This just in: Next month, President Obama will appear in a back-to-school special with American Idol Kelly Clarkson and basketball star LeBron James. The 30-minute documentary will air on Viacom stations like MTV and BET. It’s part of an education initiative by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation called “Get Schooled.”
Of course, to get schooled, you need to have a qualified instructor. And you’d figure in this job market there’d be plenty of teachers vying for every slot. But from Maryland to California, school districts are turning their focus overseas to fill certain teaching jobs. From Birmingham, Ala., Gigi Douban reports.
College-Entrance Test Scores Flagging
Only about a quarter of the 2009 high school graduates taking the ACT admissions test have the skills to succeed in college, according to a report on the exam that shows little improvement over results from the 2008 graduating class.
The Iowa City, Iowa-based ACT said 23% of this year’s high school graduates had scores that indicated they were ready for college in all four ACT subject areas, or had at least a 75% chance of earning a grade of C or better in entry-level courses. Last year, a similar ACT analysis found that 22% of the class of 2008 was college-ready.
“We’re not making the progress we need to be making,” said Bob Wise, president of the Alliance for Excellent Education, an advocacy group focused on boosting high-school graduation rates. “The only way you improve these numbers and get them higher is by improving your secondary schools.”
About 1.48 million of the 3.3 million members of the high school class of 2009 took the ACT, typically in their junior year. ACT said its report was based on comparing students’ ACT test scores in English, reading, math and science with the grades they earned in related courses during their first year in college.
Much more on the 2009 ACT here.
Rejected Milwaukee voucher schools sue
Eleven organizers who planned to open new voucher schools this fall but were rejected by the recently formed New Schools Approval Board have sued State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Evers and Marquette University.
In a lawsuit filed this month, the organizers contend that Evers and Marquette University violated the due process clause of the U.S. Constitution’s 14th Amendment by turning over the legislative authority to approve voucher schools to a private party, the Institute for the Transformation of Learning at Marquette.
The school organizers are asking for an injunction restraining Evers from enforcing the new provisions passed by the Legislature this summer that tightened regulations on schools within the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program, or voucher program.
Those provisions required that plans for new voucher schools be approved by the New Schools Advisory Board, part of the Institute for the Transformation of Learning, which is led by voucher and charter school advocate Howard Fuller.
Study Finds That Online Education Beats the Classroom
A recent 93-page report on online education, conducted by SRI International for the Department of Education, has a starchy academic title, but a most intriguing conclusion: “On average, students in online learning conditions performed better than those receiving face-to-face instruction.”
The report examined the comparative research on online versus traditional classroom teaching from 1996 to 2008. Some of it was in K-12 settings, but most of the comparative studies were done in colleges and adult continuing-education programs of various kinds, from medical training to the military.
Over the 12-year span, the report found 99 studies in which there were quantitative comparisons of online and classroom performance for the same courses. The analysis for the Department of Education found that, on average, students doing some or all of the course online would rank in the 59th percentile in tested performance, compared with the average classroom student scoring in the 50th percentile. That is a modest but statistically meaningful difference.
What You Should Consider Before Education Graduate School
If you’re thinking about going into teaching, take heed of this message from Katherine Merseth, a senior lecturer and director of the teacher education program at Harvard University: “The dirty little secret about schools of education is that they have been the cash cows of universities for many, many years, and it’s time to say, ‘Show us what you can do, or get out of the business.'”
Merseth, who spoke at an event in Washington, D.C., this week as part of a panel about how to improve teacher quality, was not trashing her employer, to be sure. Nor was she discouraging aspiring teachers from going to graduate school. Merseth was taking aim at institutions that produce ill-prepared teachers and yet insist on holding a monopoly in awarding teaching degrees. “It’s high time that we broke up the cartel,” she said. “We need to hold graduate schools of education more accountable.” Merseth says that of the 1,300 graduate teacher training programs in the country, about 100 or so are adequately preparing teachers and “the others could be shut down tomorrow.”
2009 ACT National & State Scores; 30% of Wisconsin Students Meet all 4 ACT College readiness Benchmarks (23% Nationally)
Each year, ACT releases both national and state-specific reports on the most recent graduating senior high school class. These reports assess the level of student college readiness based on aggregate score results of the ACT® college admission and placement exam.
The foundation of this annual report is empirical ACT data that specify what happens to high school graduates once they get to college or work based on how well they were prepared in middle or high school. ACT believes that, by understanding and utilizing this data, states and districts across the country can help advance and promote ACT’s mission of college and career readiness for all students.
The ACT is a curriculum-based measure of college readiness. ACT components include:
Tests of academic achievement in English, math, reading, science, and writing (optional)
High school grade and course information
Student Profile Section
Career Interest Inventory
The ACT:
Every few years, ACT conducts the ACT National Curriculum Survey to ensure its curriculum-based assessment tools accurately measure the skills high school teachers teach and instructors of entry-level college courses expect. The ACT is the only college readiness test designed to reflect the results of such a survey.
ACT’s College Readiness Standards are sets of statements intended to help students, parents and educators understand the meaning of test scores. The standards relate test scores to the types of skills needed for success in high school and beyond. They serve as a direct link between what students have learned and what they are ready to do next. The ACT is the only college readiness test for which scores can be tied directly to standards.
Only the ACT reports College Readiness Benchmark Scores – A benchmark score is the minimum score needed on an ACT subject-area test to indicate a 50% chance of obtaining a B or higher or about a 75% chance of obtaining a C or higher in the corresponding credit-bearing college courses, which include English Composition, Algebra, Social Science and Biology. These scores were empirically derived based on the actual performance of students in college. The College Readiness Benchmark Scores are:
Individual state reports can be found here.
The 2009 national profile: 110K pdf (Wisconsin PDF). 2009 Wisconsin Report.
Madison ACT scores beat state, national average but fall slightly
Even as Madison’s most recent high school seniors continued to outperform their state and national peers on the ACT test, districtwide scores among the class of 2009 edged slightly downward from past years, according to test results released Wednesday.
Sixty-nine percent of Madison’s 12th-graders last year took the ACT college admissions test, receiving an average composite score of 24.0 out of a possible 36. The composite score for Wisconsin was 22.3, unchanged from the past two years. Nationally, the average composite score was 21.1.
The largest gain among ethnic groups in Madison was among Asian-Americans, whose average composite score rose from 22.3 to 23.4 this year. Black students’ scores declined, from 19.2 to 18.4. Hispanic students’ scores also dropped, from 21.7 to 21.4, and white students’ scores fell, from 25.4 to 25.0, the district reported.
Over the past 15 years, ACT scores in the district have ranged from 23.5 in 1994-95 to 24.6 in 2006-07.
……
Thirty percent of Wisconsin test-takers met all four ACT benchmark scores, compared with 23 percent nationally.
The Adolescent Politics of Virtual Education
In 1995, I was sure that the explosion of the web would result in a good deal of online learning competition — and fast. I may have been right about the first but not the second. It took a dozen years for online learning to get big and competitive, but it is finally a force to be reckoned with. Next month there will be close to two million students learning online at home and at school.
Back then I was superintendent in Federal Way Washington, between Seattle and Tacoma. We were a founding district in Microsoft’s Anytime Anywhere Learning initiative and began rolling out laptop programs to all of our secondary schools. The brave new world of education blending the best of online and onsite learning seemed right around the corner.
In September 1996, we opened the Internet Academy, the nation’s first K-12 virtual school. It was a bootstrapped operation; a group of intrepid teachers staying a day ahead of the kids and testing the application of the state’s seat time requirements.
Enrollment quickly grew to over 1,000 students with about half new to public education (i.e., home and private school students) with an even split between students seeking acceleration and those seeking credit recovery. For most of a decade, Internet Academy had Washington’s virtual space to itself.
Cap on Virtual Schools Jeopardizes Wisconsin’s Eligibility for Federal Education Funds
Online public charter schools (or virtual schools) are charter schools under contract with a school board in which all or a portion of the instruction is provided through means of the Internet, and the pupils enrolled in and instructional staff employed by the school are geographically remote from each other.
Virtual schools have become an incredibly popular option throughout the country. In Wisconsin, thousands of families from Green Bay to Lancaster, from Racine to Rhinelander and other communities in every county in the state, have chosen to enroll their children in these unique and innovative public schools. School districts across Wisconsin (including those in Grantsburg, Appleton, Monroe, Fredonia, Waukesha and McFarland) currently offer or are exploring this option.
But in Wisconsin, even though online public charter schools are successful and embraced by parents, teachers and administrators alike, access to this innovation is rationed.
Special-Education Stigmatization
School vouchers may be the best way to curb abuse of public funds.
Federal law first insisted in 1975 that public schools educate disabled students. Since then, the portion of students receiving special education services has increased 64%. Today, 13.5% of all public school students have been diagnosed with a disability. Special education, it turns out, is no longer particularly special at all.
Taxpayers pay a substantial price for the growth in special education. In New York state, for instance, in 2007, the average special education student cost $14,413 more to educate than a regular-enrollment student.
What has produced such rapid growth in the percentage of American students identified as disabled? Don’t worry–it’s not “something in the water.”
Better means of identification explain part of special education’s expansion. However, a growing body of research points to a less benign cause: Schools see a financial incentive to designate low-achieving students as disabled, while they may not actually be disabled at all.
Grand Rapids Teacher Union Ratifies Contract
The Grand Rapids Education Association has ratified a four-year tentative labor agreement with the Grand Rapids school district.
The contract was approved 727-236, with one ballot thrown out.
The Grand Rapids Board of Education has a special meeting to consider the contract at 4:30 p.m. Wednesday at the district’s administration building, 1331 Franklin St. SE.
After informational meetings last week, several teachers said they were frustrated the pact includes no retroactive salary increase for the two years they worked without a contract and a modest 2 percent salary raise for the coming school year.
Many are also dismayed the contract does not cap class sizes, language they say claim they sought to include.
Dangling Money, Obama Pushes Education Shift
Holding out billions of dollars as a potential windfall, the Obama administration is persuading state after state to rewrite education laws to open the door to more charter schools and expand the use of student test scores for judging teachers.
That aggressive use of economic stimulus money by Education Secretary Arne Duncan is provoking heated debates over the uses of standardized testing and the proper federal role in education, issues that flared frequently during President George W. Bush’s enforcement of his signature education law, called No Child Left Behind.
A recent case is California, where legislative leaders are vowing to do anything necessary, including rewriting a law that prohibits the use of student scores in teacher evaluations, to ensure that the state is eligible for a chunk of the $4.3 billion the federal Education Department will soon award to a dozen or so states. The law had strong backing from the state teachers union.
Illinois, Indiana, Louisiana, Tennessee and several other states have moved to bring their laws or policies into line with President Obama’s school improvement agenda.
Kevin Carey has more.
Nigeria: Outdated Curricula, Challenge to West Africa Education – UNESCO
The problem of education in Sub-Saharan Africa is due to outdated curricula and minimal sustainable reforms undertaken since independence, the Director, Regional Bureau of Education (BREDA) UNESCO, Mrs. Ann-Therese Ndong-Jatta, has said.
Speaking at a regional workshop held yesterday in Abuja on Revitalising Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) provision in the Economic Community of West Africa (ECOWAS) region, she said: “It is unfortunate that there is a bifurcation if not undervaluing of skills development in the provision of education.
This, she said, “has resulted in school graduates without skills, and led to the present disenchantment among young people who are loosing faith in education system and political leadership to address their needs.”
Education minister Sam Egwu said regular curriculum review, followed by appropriate staff development and the expansion of the knowledge base on information and communication technology, are vital ingredients in reversing the situation.
Washington, DC School Choice Advocates Step Up Campaign
School choice advocates are gearing up for a final push this week to try to get U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan to reverse his decision to rescind scholarships for 216 low-income District students.
The advocates, led by D.C. Parents for School Choice and DC Children First, are planning radio, newspaper and Internet ads. The advocates, who have formed www.savethe216.com, are also holding a vigil at noon Thursday outside the U.S. Department of Education.
The campaign, billed as a major escalation of their efforts, is designed to get Duncan to reinstate the scholarships before the school year begins.
“Time is truly running out for Secretary Duncan to reverse his disastrous decision and to save these 216 children,” said former Ward 7 D.C. Council member Kevin Chavous, a Democrat who is heading up efforts to save the students’ scholarships. “Scholarship money is already available for the 216 students and there is no law or regulation preventing them from accessing these scholarships. Secretary Duncan needs to show the nation that this administration is serious about reforming education.”
Do Teachers Need Education Degrees?
New York Times via a Doug Newman email:
In a Room for Debate forum in June on the value of liberal arts master’s degrees, one group of readers — teachers and education administrators — generally agreed a higher degree was well worth the investment. They pointed out that pay and promotion in public schools were tied to the accumulation of such credentials and credits, specifically from colleges of education.
But current teacher training has a large chorus of critics, including prominent professors in education schools themselves. For example, the director of teacher education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, Katherine Merseth, told a conference in March that of the nation’s 1,300 graduate teacher training programs, only about 100 were doing a competent job and “the others could be shut down tomorrow.” And Obama administration officials support a shift away from using master’s degrees for pay raises, and a shift toward compensating teachers based on children’s performance.
Should the public schools reduce the weight they give to education school credentials in pay and promotion decisions? Is this happening already, and, if so, what is replacing the traditional system for compensating teachers?
The Cheese Is Not the Only Difference
NEA affiliates in California and Wisconsin seem to have different attitudes about their state laws banning student data being used to evaluate teachers. The Obama administration has been insisting that those laws be eliminated or altered before the states can be eligible for Race to the Top funds.
Madison School Board Talented & Gifted (TAG) Plan Discussion & Approval
There were several public appearances [4.1MB mp3 audio] Monday evening related to the Madison School District’s Talented & Gifted plan. TJ Mertz, Kris Gomez-Schmidt, Janet Mertz (not related) and Shari Galitzer spoke during the public appearance segment of the meeting. Their comments begin at 3:13 into this mp3 audio file.
The School Board and Administration’s discussion can be heard via this 6MB mp3 audio file. The previous week’s discussion can be heard here. Madison United for Academic Excellence posted a number of useful links on this initiative here.
Finally, the recent Private/Parochial, Open Enrollment Leave, Open Enrollment Enter, Home Based Parent Surveys provides a useful background for the interested reader.
Hard-Hit Schools Try Public-Relations Push
Public schools in the U.S. have added professional marketing to their back-to-school shopping lists.
Financially struggling urban districts are trying to win back students fleeing to charter schools, private schools and suburban districts that offer open enrollment. Administrators say they are working hard to improve academics — but it can’t hurt to burnish their image as well.
A bus in Washington, D.C., carries an ad for the city’s public schools, which have seen enrollment plunge from nearly 150,000 students in 1970 to less than 50,000 last year. The district spent $100,000 this spring on a campaign that also included radio spots in an effort to win back students who have left public schools. The ads include quotes from students who say they are glad they stayed in public school.
So they are recording radio ads, filming TV infomercials and buying address lists for direct-mail campaigns. Other efforts, by both districts and individual schools, call for catering Mexican dinners for potential students, making sales pitches at churches and hiring branding experts to redesign logos.
“Schools are really getting that they can’t just expect students to show up any more,” said Lisa Relou, who directs marketing efforts for the Denver Public Schools. “They have to go out and recruit.”
Administrators working on the public-relations push say the potential returns are high. State funding for public schools is based on attendance, so each new student brings more money, typically $5,000 to $8,000 per head. In addition, schools with small enrollments are at constant risk of being shuttered in this recession, and full classrooms help.
Some districts also hope a better image will entice more local business sponsorship and persuade voters to support school levies and bond issues
Substance, such as a rigorous curriculum, strong school leadership, extensive education options (languages, arts, science and math, among others) will always be better than simple pr/marketing/advertising efforts. General Motors tried re-brand their business repeatedly over the past few decades.
An Interview with Diane Ravitch
The Obama Administration and nearly every state have now endorsed national or common standards. Is this a good thing? Or is now the time to get worried, the logic being that, when ‘everyone’ is for something, the rest of us should watch out?
I have favored common standards for a long time. When I worked for Bush I in the early 1990s, I helped to launch federally funded projects to develop voluntary national standards in the arts, English, history, geography, civics, economics, science, and other essential school subjects. Some of the projects were successful; others were not. The whole enterprise foundered because a) it was not authorized by Congress, and b) it came to fruition during the transition between two administrations and had no oversight, no process of review and improvement. So, yes, I believe the concept is important.
However, I worry about today’s undertaking, first, because it will focus only on reading and mathematics, nothing else; and second, because I don’t know whether the effort will become a bureaucratic nightmare. But I won’t prejudge the outcome. I will hope for the best, and hope that today’s standardistas learned some lessons from what happened nearly two decades ago.
Related:
- Randi Weingarten: Stop vilifying teachers unions: Politicians, parents and labor leaders share responsibility
- The Ravitch Fallacy by Nelson Smith
- Thomas Carroll: Teachers unions frequently flunk the school reform test
B.C. university adds grade worse than F
There are two new scarlet letters in academia.
Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, B.C., recently introduced a grade called FD to deal with cheaters.
The letters stand for failure with academic dishonesty.
Rob Gordon, the university’s director of criminology, said the FD grade was introduced to catch cheaters who use the Internet and was part of a larger package of reforms “relating to student misconduct issues and honesty.”
“It is a penalty that can only be imposed by department heads, not by individual professors,” Gordon, acting chairman of the university’s senate committee on academic integrity, said Thursday.
“It would be used in egregious cases of academic dishonesty.”
At Sinclair Community College, Focus Is Jobs
When Todd Sollar was laid off after 11 years at General Motors, he enrolled at Sinclair Community College in downtown Dayton to study robotics.
“Hopefully, with a degree I’ll be marketable for a job,” said Mr. Sollar, 32, who has overcome his nervousness about not fitting in because of his age. In fact, he is thriving, getting A’s and B’s, far better than in high school where he said officials had wrongly pegged him as having a learning disability.
As legions of displaced autoworkers and others face the prospect that their onetime jobs may be gone forever, many like Mr. Sollar will need training for a fresh start.
And perhaps the best place for them will be community colleges, long the workhorses of American higher education, workhorses that get little respect. In an unforgiving economy, these colleges provide lifelines not only for laid-off workers in need of a new career, but for recent high school graduates who find that many types of entry-level jobs now require additional skills.
School spotlight: Program provides taste of medical research
West High School student Tulika Singh spent part of her summer studying epilepsy in rodents — an experience that made her feel like a contributor to research being conducted at the UW School of Medicine and Public Health.
Singh, who will be a senior this year, was one of 15 students in a Research Apprentice Program based at the school.
“Tulika (was) basically doing the work that college undergrads do for research experience and credits during the year,” said Dr. Thomas Sutula, neurology department chairman. He said apprentices are part of the team for the summer.
Singh, who wrote a research paper and presented it, was involved in a study of how genes influence epilepsy. Her mentor was Craig Levenick, senior research specialist.
“It’s just absolutely cool,” Singh said of the experience.
In its 29th year, the seven-week Research Apprentice Program is designed to help increase diversity in science and health professions. The program is geared toward incoming juniors and seniors from Dane County high schools. It’s based on academic performance and an interest in medicine.
You Need Teachers for School Reform
Critics of public education love to point fingers. But condemning teachers unions (“Pay Your Teachers Well,” Review & Outlook, Aug. 3) is not only counterproductive to reform, it aims at the wrong target.
School improvement is only possible with the buy-in of teachers, whose collective voices are brought together by their unions. And many unions, notably the two you single out, have initiated a number of successful reforms.
The Baltimore Teachers Union has been deeply involved in efforts to strengthen teaching and learning in city schools, where students have posted double-digit gains the past several years. We are pleased that improvements also are taking place at the KIPP school you highlight. Contrary to your assertion, the union seeks only to have KIPP honor its agreement to pay teachers for their time worked. No other extended-day school in Baltimore has refused to do so.
More on the Madison School District’s Proposed Talented & Gifted Plan
The new program would help meet the needs of students through better identification and enrichment.
Lorie Raihala had planned for her kids to attend public school — but over the years, the lack of programming for talented and gifted students proved too frustrating.
“We tried very hard for six years to make it work for them, and we’re very supportive of the public school system, so we really wanted it to work,” Raihala said. But it affected their emotional well-being, that their needs weren’t being met in the classroom.”
So Raihala’s children moved to a private school. And Raihala joined a group of parents pushing for a commitment by the Madison School District to improve programming for its talented and gifted, or TAG, students.
That group will score a victory Monday night when a plan drafted by the district that would overhaul how TAG students are identified and supported through their school careers comes before the Madison School Board. The three-year plan would replace current TAG policy, which has been out of compliance with state statutes since 1990.
- Madison School District Talented & Gifted Plan notes & links.
- MP3 audio: School Board discussion of the plan.
- Madison United for Academic Excellence links and notes (well worth reading).
Life is transformed
Genetic engineering is beginning to live up to its name. Over the past 30 years it has meant transferring existing genes, one at a time, between organisms. Now – under the banner of “synthetic biology” – scientists are using the principles of systems engineering to transform whole organisms and potentially even to create novel forms of life.
Synthetic biology is sufficiently different from old-style genetic engineering to need a new system of regulation and governance, plus a fresh effort by its practitioners to tell the public what they are up to. Enormous benefits could flow from their work – practical pay-offs, such as new medicines and biofuels, as well as scientific insights into the nature of life.
But there are serious concerns too. First is bio-safety. Synthetic biology involves the production of novel living organisms that are self-replicating and potentially uncontrollable if something goes wrong.
Such fears were voiced in the mid-1970s when scientists first discovered how to snip a piece of DNA out of one organism and splice it into another. Indeed everyone in the field agreed to a voluntary moratorium on genetic engineering while they considered the safety consequences. Soon work resumed and, to this day, no serious accident can be blamed on the genetic manipulation of microbes.
Tulsa Public Schools Proposal to the Gates Foundation
America is at a crossroads. After leading the way in universal primary and secondary education, the academic achievements of American students have fallen behind those in many other countries. Over half of these deficiencies come as a result of the wide achievement gaps that exist along racial/ethnic and socio-economic lines. Tulsa Public Schools (TPS) represents just one of many American school districts combating the challenges of deficient academic performance.
Tulsa Public Schools believes that the best weapon in the battle to bring about greater academic success and college-readiness in the American student is an effective teacher. It is eager to seize the opportunity to become a model and catalyst for change for the rest of the nation.
TPS will swiftly implement its Teacher Effectiveness initiative with the support of a Gates’ partnership but is determined to execute this initiative in the absence of a Gates’ partnership if necessary. The plan outlined below was developed out of the painstaking work of dozens of teachers, principals, and central office employees. Three Tulsa Classroom Teachers Association officers were intimately involved in every step of the development process. The TPS Board of Education is enthusiastically supportive and will make all necessary changes to local regulations to enable the full implementation. Likewise, Oklahoma legislative leadership and senior executives at the Oklahoma State Department of Education have committed to promoting changes in state law and practice necessary to make these strategies possible. Moreover, local business leaders and philanthropists have pledged to generate local funding support.
View the complete Tulsa proposal here (7MB PDF).
A Real-Life School Of Rock
NPR:
Do you really need to go to school to learn about rocking out? Many musicians might say no: Lock yourself in your room with a bunch of records and a guitar, put in your days on the road playing in scummy clubs, and you’ll master the craft eventually.
Or, starting this Monday, you could go to the real-life “school of rock” — the brand-new Academy of Contemporary Music at the University of Central Oklahoma. The program has true rock cred — it was started by Steven Drozd and Scott Booker, respectively the guitarist and manager of the Flaming Lips, a Grammy-winning rock band.
“The idea here is not that we’re just a school of rock,” Booker says. “The idea behind this program is really as much about business and learning how the industry works while you’re learning to play better.”
Unlike the original Academy of Contemporary Music in Guildford, England, the University of Central Oklahoma ACM offers an actual college degree. Booker adds, “not only are you taking general ed, but you’re also taking aural skills and music theory and those things that anyone who’s getting a music degree has to take.”
Milwaukee Schools’ Power struggle likely to be messy
The decision by Gov. Jim Doyle and Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett last week to push for giving Barrett control of some major aspects of Milwaukee Public Schools will prompt a historic, intense and almost surely messy test of the body politic of the city and the state when it comes to education issues.
Here’s an early guide on what to watch for when it comes to body parts and their role in the debate:
• Spine: Any major change in the status quo around here takes a lot of backbone – this is Milwaukee, after all. Making a change as controversial as this will take an especially large amount of determination. Are Doyle and Barrett willing to put that much of their spines into this fight?
Are opponents such as the Milwaukee teachers union sufficiently determined to fight a powerful list of backers, including not only Doyle and Barrett but major business leaders, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and state school superintendent Tony Evers?
Cold Prospects
The Concord Review
13 August 2009
Today’s Boston Globe has a good-sized article on “Hot Prospects,”–local high school football players facing “increasing pressure from recruiters to make their college decisions early.”
That’s right, it is not the colleges that are getting pressure from outstanding students seeking admission based on their academic achievement, it is colleges putting pressure on high school athletes to get them to “sign” with the college.
The colleges are required by the AAU to wait until the prospect is a Senior in high school before engaging in active recruiting including “visits and contact from college coaches,” and, for some local football players the recruiting pressure even comes from such universities as Harvard and Stanford.
Perhaps Senior year officially starts in June, because the Globe reports that one high school tight end from Wellesley, Massachusetts, for example, “committed to Stanford in early June, ending the suspense of the region’s top player.”
The University of Connecticut “made an offer to” an athletic quarterback from Natick High School, “and a host of others, including Harvard and Stanford, are interested,” says the Globe.
In the meantime, high school football players are clearly not being recruited by college professors for their outstanding academic work. When it comes to academic achievement, high school students have to apply to colleges and wait until the college decides whether they will be admitted or not. Some students apply for “Early Decision,” but in that case, it is the college, not the athlete, who makes the decision to “commit.”
Intelligent and diligent high school students who manage achievement in academics even at the high level of accomplishment of their football-playing peers who are being contacted, visited, and recruited by college coaches, do not find that they are contacted, visited, or recruited by college professors, no matter how outstanding their high school academic work may be.
In some other countries, the respect for academic work is somewhat different. One student, who earned the International Baccalaureate Diploma and had his 15,000-word independent study essay on the Soviet-Afghan War published in The Concord Review last year, was accepted to Christ Church College, Oxford, from high school. He reported to me that during the interview he had with tutors from that college, “they spent a lot of time talking to me about my TCR essay in the interview.” He went on to say: “Oxford doesn’t recognize or consider extra-curriculars/sports in the admissions process (no rowing recruits) because they are so focused on academics. So I thought it was pretty high praise of the Review that they were so interested in my essay (at that time it had not won the Ralph Waldo Emerson Prize).”
There are many other examples from other countries of the emphasis placed on academic achievement and the lack of emphasis on sports and other non-academic activities, perhaps especially in Asian countries.
One young lady, a student at Boston Latin School, back from a Junior year abroad at a high school in Beijing, reported in the Boston Globe that: “Chinese students, especially those in large cities or prosperous suburbs and counties and even some in impoverished rural areas, have a more rigorous curriculum than any American student, whether at Charlestown High, Boston Latin, or Exeter. These students work under pressure greater than the vast majority of U.S. students could imagine…teachers encourage outside reading of histories rather than fiction.”
That is not to say that American (and foreign) high school students who do the work to get their history research papers published in The Concord Review don’t get into colleges. So far, ninety have gone to Harvard, seventy-four to Yale, twelve to Oxford, and so on, but the point is that, unlike their football-paying peers, they are not contacted, visited and recruited in the same way.
The bottom line is that American colleges and universities, from their need to have competitive sports teams, are sending the message to all of our high school students (and their teachers) that, while academic achievement may help students get into college one day, what colleges are really interested in, and willing to contact them about, and visit them about, and take them for college visits about, and recruit them for, is their athletic achievement, not their academic achievement. What a stupid, self-defeating message to keep sending to our academically diligent secondary students (and their diligent teachers)!!
“Teach by Example”
Will Fitzhugh [founder]
Consortium for Varsity Academics® [2007]
The Concord Review [1987]
Ralph Waldo Emerson Prizes [1995]
National Writing Board [1998]
TCR Institute [2002]
730 Boston Post Road, Suite 24
Sudbury, Massachusetts 01776 USA
978-443-0022; 800-331-5007
www.tcr.org; fitzhugh@tcr.org
Varsity Academics®
Format War Clouds E-Book Horizon
Thinking about making the leap to digital books? First, you’ll need to add a jumble of new lingo to your dictionary: .epub, pdb, BeBB, and Adobe Content Server 4, just to name a few.
The burgeoning marketplace for e-books is riddled with inconsistent and incompatible formats. That means there’s often little guarantee that an e-book you buy from one online store, like the new Barnes & Noble store, will work on popular reading devices like Amazon.com’s Kindle or Sony’s Reader.
In fact, most popular reading devices and e-book stores use proprietary formats. Amazon only sells Kindle-format books (called “.azw”), which can only be viewed on its Kindle e-reader and with software Amazon has made for Apple’s iPhone. Barnes & Noble uses a proprietary format (called “.pdb”), which can only be read with software the bookseller has made for PCs, iPhones and BlackBerrys.
That’s why Sony won applause from some e-book watchers by announcing Thursday that its e-book store was switching from a proprietary format called BeBB to Epub, an open standard put together by an industry group called the International Digital Publishing Forum. Sony’s Reader has long been able to open files in the Epub format.
The case against national school standards: Obama’s push would homogenize education even further
President Obama recently announced a $4.35 billion “Race to the Top” fund that he and Education Secretary Arne Duncan will use, among other things, to “reward states that come together and adopt a common set of standards and assessments.” Duncan has championed uniform national standards as a key to educational improvement since taking office. “If we accomplish one thing in the coming years,” he said back in February, “it should be to eliminate the extreme variation in standards across America.”
That goal now seems within reach.
Both the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers recently stepped forward to lead the charge, and 46 states are already behind them. The day may soon come when every student in the country is expected to master the same material at the same age.
Let’s hope that day never comes.
American High Education is Sliding Lower & Lower
You may have heard about Trina Thompson. Unable to find work, she’s suing her alma mater, Monroe College, to recover $70,000 in tuition. The Thompson case may not turn out to be the precedent-setter that some theorize, because Monroe makes unusually bold promises to students about post-college success.
But the sad truth is this: Practically all colleges are failing their students nowadays, and in most cases at far greater expense than Monroe failed Thompson.
Historically, criticism of education in America has targeted grade-school and secondary education. Indeed, perhaps the best thing about the K-12 is that in these polarized times, it is the great uniter: Maligned by liberals and conservatives, Christians and Jews, Red Sox fans and Yankee fans, and just about everyone else in the grand American cultural stew.
Technical colleges foresee big growth
Technical colleges throughout the state are bracing for a fall enrollment boom, spurred by unemployed workers who need retraining and students looking for affordable alternatives to four-year universities.
The schools got a glimpse of the heightened demand last year when Blackhawk and Mid-State technical colleges were flooded with new enrollment, giving them double-digit percentage increases for the year. Overall enrollment for the Wisconsin Technical College System increased about 3.2% in 2008-’09, according to system spokeswoman Morna Foy.
But that was then.
“I think it’s not going to be too far off to say we’re expecting enrollment increases this year about 10% statewide, and that’s pretty significant,” Foy said.
Final numbers won’t be apparent at the state’s 16 schools until mid-September, when classes have started and students have settled in for the semester.
But most technical colleges are girding themselves based on what they’ve seen so far.
Hillsborough schools and teachers’ union join hands with Florida voucher advocates to train private school teachers
On a normal day, oil and water just don’t mix.
Public schools and teachers’ unions don’t say nice things about those who support school vouchers, sending kids to private schools with public money. Most of the time, such folks just don’t get along.
But Wednesday wasn’t a normal day.
In a move that experts are calling nearly unprecedented, the Hillsborough County schools and teachers’ union have joined forces with a nonprofit Florida voucher group to help train private school teachers.
Step Up for Students — which runs the state’s tax credit voucher program — plans to spend at least $100,000 on classes for teachers who serve its scholarship students, among the county’s most economically disadvantaged children. The school district and union will provide space in the jointly developed Center for Technology and Education.
Pa. education board OKs new high-school tests
The state Board of Education on Thursday approved proposed new tests to measure Pennsylvania students’ competence to graduate from high school.
The 14-2 vote clears the way for months of regulatory review of the proposed Keystone Exams, including scrutiny by the Legislature, where critics still could block the new requirements if they can muster majority support in both houses.
The Keystone Exams, developed after two years of discussion and revision, would replace the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment tests now administered in the 11th grade.
Students would take the exams on specific subjects as they complete their course work throughout their high school years , generally grades nine through 12. The scores would count as at least one-third of their final grade.
Proponents say the Keystones would more effectively measure student progress toward meeting statewide academic standards, reducing district-to-district discrepancies evident under the present system, while allowing local districts to substitute their own tests with state approval.
Expanding the Charter Option
Andrea Byrd, mother of two boys, had enough with her son’s school. After she and her older son, Andrae, moved from Mississippi to Memphis a year ago, the formerly straight-A student “started dumbing himself down,” she says, to fit in with the other boys at his new school.
“I needed to get my child into a school where there were high expectations,” Ms. Byrd says. A charter school had recently opened nearby, but the 34-year-old single mom hesitated over getting an application since Tennessee law required her son to either be considered low-performing–which he wasn’t–or attend a low-performing school–which he didn’t–in order to get in. But all that changed a few weeks ago, when the state enacted a law for charter schools to also include students from low-income families. Two weeks ago, Ms. Byrd went into the Power Center Academy for an application. Later that same day, she got a call to say Andrae had been accepted.
The U.S. Education Department is engaged in a high-pressure campaign to get states to lift limits on charter schools through a $4 billion education fund, Race to the Top, that encourages more charters as one of the criteria for states to qualify for a piece of the pie. A total of 40 states and the District of Columbia permit charter schools.
EDITORIAL: Revolutionize the classroom
We hope that the Palm Beach County School District gets the $120 million grant it’s seeking from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. But first we need to deal with the infamous “70 percent” number.
In charts and text, the grant application says several times that only 30 percent of the district’s 13,000 teachers are “effective.” Which means that 70 percent must be “ineffective.” Last week, Laura Green of The Post reported those percentages. Of course, teachers have been outraged.
In a “Management Letter” to employees, Superintendent Art Johnson blamed the media. He said it was “unfortunate” that The Post article “left teachers to believe that 70 percent of PBSD teachers are ineffective.” He said that conclusion was based on a statistic in the application “which indicated that only 30 percent of PBSD reading and math teachers taught students who achieved MORE than a year’s growth in the same year.”
Dr. Johnson’s blame-shifting is disingenuous. His explanation of the statistics is not in the Gates application, so Ms. Green could not have reported it based on that document. Rather than blame The Post, Dr. Johnson should have accepted responsibility for the confusion and moved on.
And now, we will move on – to the proposal itself. The remainder of the district’s application contains remarkable candor and worthy goals. It also hints at – but does not nail down – how to achieve those goals. The foundation’s money and a hefty chunk from the district would help provide those specifics.
A big goal is to close racial achievement gaps. The graduation rate for white students is 87 percent, but it’s 20 points lower for Hispanics and 30 points lower for African-Americans – in a majority-minority district.
Pittsburgh schools polish final pitch for big Gates grant
Invited by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to compete for half a billion dollars in teacher-effectiveness grants, Tulsa Public Schools in Oklahoma put about 80 people to work on a proposal.
Pittsburgh Public Schools, also invited to apply, invested hundreds of employee hours on its plan and worked so closely with outside technical advisers, McKinsey and Co., that it gave them office space at district headquarters in Oakland.
Hillsborough County Public Schools in Florida assembled focus groups of teachers, administrators and community members to gather input for a proposal, which has been through nine or 10 drafts.
The proposals had to be turned in by Friday, but the unusually rigorous application process isn’t over yet.
In all, 10 invitees — most of them urban districts in various stages of broad improvement campaigns — will meet Wednesday in Seattle to make presentations to Gates officials. Then they’ll wait to see who is selected for prestigious Gates funding — and wonder whether Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates and his wife will have a hand in the decision-making.
Three Peas in a Pod
Mike Bloomberg’s comments at Monday’s press conference announcing plans to extend a test-based promotion policy to grades four and six were eerily reminiscent of Arne Duncan’s and Joel Klein’s reactions to two reports on social promotion released by the Consortium on Chicago School Research in 2004. The Chicago Consortium, an independent research group studying Chicago schools, examined the effects of promotional gates at the third-, sixth- and eighth-grade levels. (I reviewed one of the draft reports at the request of the Consortium.) The findings were unequivocal: Test-based retention did not alter the achievement trajectories of third-graders, and sixth-graders who were retained had lower achievement growth than similar low-achieving students who were promoted. Implementing the eighth-grade promotional gate reduced overall dropout rates slightly, but clearly lowered the likelihood of high school graduation for very low achievers and students who were already overage for grade at the time they reached the gate.
David Herszenhorn, writing in the New York Times at the time, described a Chicago press conference releasing the reports. He quoted Arne Duncan, then the chief executive of the Chicago public schools, as saying, “Common sense tells you that ending social promotion has contributed to higher test scores and lower dropout rates over the last eight years … I am absolutely convinced in my heart, it’s the right thing to do.” Herszenhorn delicately noted that Duncan made claims about the promotional policies that were not supported by the two reports. “While the report drew no such conclusion,” he wrote, “[Duncan] credited the tough promotion rules for improvements in the system as a whole, including better overall test scores, higher graduation and attendance rates and a lower overall dropout rate.”
In the same article, Herszenhorn suggested that NYC Chancellor Joel Klein had “seemed to push aside the findings.” He cited a statement by Klein that, “The Chicago study strongly supports our view that effective early grade interventions are key to ending social promotion and preparing students for the hard work they will encounter in later grades.” Klein’s statement was patently false: the Chicago studies didn’t examine early grade interventions. Rather, authors Jenny Nagaoka and Melissa Roderick pointed out that a great many students in Chicago were struggling well before the third-grade promotional gate, suggesting the desirability of early intervention with struggling students.
Minnesota Education commissioner responds to test results
Education Commissioner Alice Seagren joins Midday to discuss the latest test results, which show more than 1,000 Minnesota schools did not make “adequate yearly progress” under the No Child Left Behind law.
Six States in National Governor’s Association Center Pilot Project See Rise in Number of Students Taking and Succeeding on AP Exams
NGA [Complete Report 1.6MB PDF]:
To maintain the competitiveness of America’s workforce and ensure that U.S. students are prepared to succeed in college, states increasingly are recognizing the importance of offering a rigorous, common education curriculum that includes Advancement Placement (AP) courses. A new report from the NGA Center for Best Practices (NGA Center) titled Raising Rigor, Getting Results: Lessons Learned from AP Expansion, has demonstrated that it is possible for states to raise rigor and get results at scale by increasing student access to AP courses.
The report looks at the efforts of six states–Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, Maine, Nevada and Wisconsin–that received funding as part of the NGA Center’s Advanced Placement Expansion project toincrease the participation of minority and low-income students in AP courses at 51 pilot high schools in rural and urban school districts.
“Nationwide, hundreds of thousands of smart, ambitious students have the ability, but lack the opportunity, to get a head start on college through AP courses,” said John Thomasian, director of the NGA Center. “With nearly two-thirds of jobs in 2014 expected to require at least some college, this report demonstrates that increasing students’ participation in challenging coursework bolsters their ability to compete in a highly skilled, 21st century workforce.”
Madison East High School ranked “19th in this list of increases in enrollment by pilot school”
Related: Dane County High School AP Course Offerings and proposed Madison School District Talented & Gifted Plan.
Amy Hetzner has more.
The Madison School District = General Motors?
A provocative headline.
Last Wednesday, Ripon Superintendent Richard Zimman spoke to the Madison Rotary Club on “What Wisconsin’s Public Education Model Needs to Learn from General Motors Before it is too late.” 7MB mp3 audio (the audio quality is not great, but you can hear the talk if you turn up the volume!).
Zimman’s talk ranged far and wide. He discussed Wisconsin’s K-12 funding formula (it is important to remember that school spending increases annually (from 1987 to 2005, spending grew by 5.10% annually in Wisconsin and 5.25% in the Madison School District), though perhaps not in areas some would prefer.
“Beware of legacy practices (most of what we do every day is the maintenance of the status quo), @12:40 minutes into the talk – the very public institutions intended for student learning has become focused instead on adult employment. I say that as an employee. Adult practices and attitudes have become embedded in organizational culture governed by strict regulations and union contracts that dictate most of what occurs inside schools today. Any impetus to change direction or structure is met with swift and stiff resistance. It’s as if we are stuck in a time warp keeping a 19th century school model on life support in an attempt to meet 21st century demands.” Zimman went on to discuss the Wisconsin DPI’s vigorous enforcement of teacher licensing practices and provided some unfortunate math & science teacher examples (including the “impossibility” of meeting the demand for such teachers (about 14 minutes)). He further cited exploding teacher salary, benefit and retiree costs eating instructional dollars (“Similar to GM”; “worry” about the children given this situation).
Zimman noted that the most recent State of Wisconsin Budget removed the requirement that arbitrators take into consideration revenue limits (a district’s financial condition @17:30) when considering a District’s ability to afford union negotiated compensation packages. The budget also added the amount of teacher preparation time to the list of items that must be negotiated….. “we need to breakthrough the concept that public schools are an expense, not an investment” and at the same time, we must stop looking at schools as a place for adults to work and start treating schools as a place for children to learn.”
In light of this talk, It has been fascinating to watch (and participate in) the intersection of:
- our local School District’s Strategic Planning Process, and
- Governance, via our elected School Board, and
- Dan Nerad and Erik Kass, our somewhat new Superintendent and Director of Business Services, and
- the Administration, and local organizations that receive funding via our school system (“Fund 80“, among others)
Several years ago, former Madison Superintendent Art Rainwater remarked that “sometimes I think we have 25,000 school districts, one for each child”.
I found Monday evening’s school board meeting interesting, and perhaps indicative of the issues Zimman noted recently. Our public schools have an always challenging task of trying to support the growing range of wants, needs and desires for our 24,180 students, staff members, teachers, administrators, taxpayers and parents. Monday’s topics included:
- The possible hiring of 44 full time employees along with 7 figure “professional development expenditures” via federal tax receipts and borrowed funds (funded for only two years, which means cuts, tax increases or both at that time), and
- property tax implications of the District’s $12M current deficit [public comment on the budget in this 8MB mp3 audio file], and
- a rather amazing discussion of the District’s implementation of “standards based middle school report cards (think of the cost!) [30MB mp3 audio file], and
- the proposed Talented and Gifted Plan (with an interesting discussion on how many TAG staff members have training in this area vs those who work in other areas such as special education [45MB mp3 audio file]), and two, seamingly small items on the agenda that identify future initiatives (or, in the case of elementary math, continuing the “reform” model that has been in place for some time):
- District wide dual immersion proposal, including all four high schools, and
- Elementary math curriculum purchases.
I’ve not mentioned the potential addition of 4K, high school redesign or other topics that bubble up from time to time.
In my layperson’s view, taking Zimman’s talk to heart, our public schools should dramatically shrink their primary goals and focus on only the most essential topics (student achievement?). In Madison’s case, get out of the curriculum creation business and embrace online learning opportunities for those students who can excel in that space while devoting staff to the kids who need them most. I would also like to see more opportunities for our students at MATC, the UW, Edgewood College and other nearby institutions. Bellevue (WA) College has a “running start” program for the local high school. 
Chart via Whitney Tilson.
Richard Zimman closed his talk with these words (@27 minutes): “Simply throwing more money at schools to continue as they are now is not the answer. We cannot afford more of the same with just a bigger price tag”.
General Motors as formerly constituted is dead. What remains is a much smaller organization beholden to Washington. We’ll see how that plays out. The Madison School District enjoys significant financial, community and parental assets. I hope the Administration does just a few things well.
10 online textbooks ready for use in California classrooms
Painting online textbooks as a boon to student achievement and school district coffers, state Education Secretary Glen Thomas announced today that 10 free digital high school math and science textbooks are ready to be used in California classrooms.
The likelihood of students tapping them when schools open in a couple of weeks is slim, because of school districts’ textbook-adoption policies and teacher training needs, but Thomas said the move marks the first step in something that will revolutionize education in California.
“This is a groundbreaking initiative,” he told more than 100 representatives of schools, technology companies and others gathered at the Orange County Department of Education. “We think that technology is one of the ways to reform and improve education.”
Out of College at 17, and en Route to Law School at 19: A Father’s Perspective
We’ve published more than 100 comments on our post yesterday about Kate McLaughlin, the California teenager who has already graduated from college and is en route to law school.
Some of you applauded her accomplishments, and her family’s willingness to allow her to fast-track her education. Others saw it as too much too soon. And still others weighed in on whether the law was an appropriate career choice. Many of you wrote that you could identify with Ms. McLaughlin.
Missing from the conversation — other than in the original article in the Orange County Register — were the voices of Ms. McLaughlin and her parents. Earlier today, though, we received a comment sent by Kate’s father, John McLaughlin. We then had a brief phone conversation in which he told me that some of the criticisms posted by readers echoed those that have been lobbed at the family for much of his daughter’s life.
Picking junior’s teacher: Should parents weigh in?
After doing some research, including sitting in on classrooms, Valerie Gilbert thought she knew which third-grade teacher would be perfect for her son, Stanley.
Impressed by that teacher’s creative, visually stimulating style, the Berkeley, Calif., mother lobbied on Stanley’s behalf. “I did my best to make my opinion known,” Gilbert said.
The school, however, placed Stanley in a different class. And to his mother’s surprise and delight, the year wound up being so successful for him that Gilbert said she is approaching his pending entry into fourth grade in a new way: by vowing to stay out of the process.
“I’m learning to be more open-minded,” she said.
With parents becoming increasingly involved in their children’s lives and educations, Gilbert’s foray into her son’s classroom placement process is not unique, particularly around this time of year when anxieties about the coming school year run high.
Ms. Cornelius has more.
Pilot math project involves SRI, USF and Helios Education Foundation
SunBay Digital Mathematics, a math education pilot project, began this week in Pinellas County.
The Helios Education Foundation and the Pinellas County School District are partnering with SRI International and the University of South Florida’s College of Education in a project to set the direction for middle school mathematics, a release said.
The one-year project involves 15 seventh-grade teachers in seven Pinellas schools. They will attend workshops and monthly meetings focused on using technology-based curriculum based on advanced math concepts.
The Pinellas Education Foundation is the fiscal agent for funding the project.
Monona Grove School District “Tentative” Goals
The board met 7/22 to discuss district goals for the coming year. The tentative goals, which we will be discussing at Wednesday’s board meeting are currently:
1) Achieve measureable increase in student achievement in core academic areas using these assessments: DIBELS, MAP , WKCE, EXPLORE, PLAN and ACT.
2) Develop measures ot assess student achievement in Encore areas and electives.
3) Align curriculum, instruction and assessment wiht standards/skill in core academic areas as defined by DIBELS, MAP , WKCE, EXPLORE, PLAN and ACT.
4) Close the achievement gaps with attention to race, ethnicity and socio economic status, using measureable assessments provide DIBELS, MAP , WKCE, EXPLORE, PLAN and ACT and reduce disproportionality with regard to placement of minority students in special edcuation.
$11,654,078 Additional Madison School District Spending Via the Federal Taxes & US Treasury Borrowing (“Stimulus”)
Madison School District Superintendent Dan Nerad [838K PDF]:
As part of Federal Stimulus funding iliat will be made available the district will receive American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) funds to be used over a two year period.
These funds are in IDEA, IDEA EC and Title 1.
Program Costs/FundingiConsultation Service Employment Contract
The district has prepared a two year funding proposal along with a budget analysis for 2009-10 and 2010-11 for each of the sources for your review. The proposal amounts are as follows:
IDEA – $6,199,552
IDEA EC – $293,082
Title I – $5,161,444
Salary Savings
The funding proposals would increase FTE’s and include funding sources during the two year period of the ARRA funds
The proposal includes quite a bit of professional development, such as $400,000 for dual language immersion, $1.48M for 4K staff and $456,000 for 4K furniture and $100,000 for talented & gifted assessment.
Plan B, without 4K spending, includes $1,150,000 for professional development in the following areas: Topics include universal design, differentiation, mental health,
inclusive practices, autism, and quality IEPs.
The growth of home-schooling
Barack Obama could hasten the spread of educating children at home
THE first thing you notice about Karen Allen’s house is that it is spotless. Even in her teenage boys’ bedrooms, not a thing is out of place. And her boys, Thomas and Taylor, are polite and engaging. Your correspondent found himself being grilled about his travels by a boy who had clearly Googled him. In this household, every chance to learn something new is eagerly seized, explains Mrs Allen.
The Allens are home-schoolers. Instead of sending their children to a public (non-fee-paying) or private school, they teach them at home. They are far from alone. A generation ago, home-schooling was rare and, in many states, illegal. Now, according to the Department of Education, there are roughly 1.5m home-schooled students in America, a number that has doubled in a decade. That is about 3% of the school-age population. The National Home Education Research Institute puts the number even higher, at between 1.8m and 2.5m.
Why do people teach their children at home? Many of the earliest were hippies who thought public schools repressive and ungroovy. Now they are far more likely to be religious conservatives. At a public school, says Mrs Allen, her boys would get neither much individual attention nor any Christian instruction. At home they get plenty of both.
In a 2007 survey by the Department of Education, 88% of home-schooling parents said that their local public schools were unsafe, drug-ridden or unwholesome in some way. Some 73% complained of shoddy academic standards. And 83% said they wanted to instil religious or moral values in their children–a number that has risen from 72% in 2003.
I think the article overplays the religious angle.
District Wide Dual Immersion Proposal for the Madison Public Schools
KIPP 15th Anniversary Gala Photos, Videos, Notes & Links and The Case for School Reform
- Video, second video
- Whitney Tilson photos.
- Tilson’s slide presentation on the “Critical Need for School Reform – PDF
A middle school for the artist
An educational dream pitched by three Hall County teachers takes flight Monday when 120 students and six teachers come together for the first day of school at the da Vinci Academy.
The pilot program provides innovative learning opportunities for gifted students with a penchant for the arts and sciences. But that’s only half of the reason it’s making a splash with educators across the Southeast. The program also will operate at about 60 percent to 70 percent of the cost per student compared to a traditional middle school, Hall County school Superintendent Will Schofield said.
Though states have made unprecedented cuts to public school funds, educators are trying to make the most of every penny while pushing programs that engage students and get results.
Schofield said the da Vinci Academy is a great example of how schools can do more with less.
“I think it truly is some Renaissance thinking is these difficult times,” he said. “It’s the exciting side of chaotic and difficult times.
That’s when you see the best in people and that’s when you see the worst in people, and I think what we’re seeing is the best in terms of innovative thinking, new ways of doing something that we’ve done the same way for a long time.
Madison School District Elementary Math Curriculum Purchases
Superintendent Dan Nerad [64K PDF]:
MMSD has begun a three-year implementation plan to achieve an equitable and balanced mathematics program at tbe elementary level. The plan was developed and refined through collaboration with teachers, Instructional Resource Teachers and principals over the course of the past several years. The plan includes the materials described below (details via this 64K PDF),
With the attached order, MMSD has provided each classroom teacher in the District with a Learning Mathematics in the Primary/Intermediate Grades instructional guide and the set of teacher resources from the Investigations program. The third component of the teacher materials is Teaching Student Centered Mathematics by John Van de Walle, which is in place in most classrooms but will continue to be ordered using ELM or Title I funds, as necessary. Additional professional resources have been or are being purchased at the building level to create a library available for all staff to access as needed. Those resources include Primary Mathematics textbooks and teacher guides, Thinking Mathematically and Children’s Mathematics by Thomas Carpenter, Teaching Number series from Wright, among other recommended titles.
MMSD has provided all Title I schools with the Primary Mathematics (Singapore) workbooks and Extra Practice workbooks for the 2009-2010 school year. All manipulatives have been ordered for Title I schools over tbe past two years and are in place. Non-Title I schools have been and will continue to use ELM funds to purchase tbe student components for the implementation of a balanced mathematics classroom.
Related:
As Classrooms Go Digital, Textbooks Are History
At Empire High School in Vail, Ariz., students use computers provided by the school to get their lessons, do their homework and hear podcasts of their teachers’ science lectures.
Down the road, at Cienega High School, students who own laptops can register for “digital sections” of several English, history and science classes. And throughout the district, a Beyond Textbooks initiative encourages teachers to create — and share — lessons that incorporate their own PowerPoint presentations, along with videos and research materials they find by sifting through reliable Internet sites.
Textbooks have not gone the way of the scroll yet, but many educators say that it will not be long before they are replaced by digital versions — or supplanted altogether by lessons assembled from the wealth of free courseware, educational games, videos and projects on the Web.
“Kids are wired differently these days,” said Sheryl R. Abshire, chief technology officer for the Calcasieu Parish school system in Lake Charles, La. “They’re digitally nimble. They multitask, transpose and extrapolate. And they think of knowledge as infinite.
Oregon’s a slow starter in race to better schools
Public school systems, like cross-country teams, are only as good as their slowest runners.
Oregon has to remember that as it toes the starting line in the Race for the Top, a competition for $4 billion in stimulus money the Obama administration is offering to states that demonstrate they are ready to adopt serious school reforms, and run with them.
As hard as it is to admit, that doesn’t sound much like Oregon. This is a state where the Democratic Legislature, urged on by the state teachers union, just passed a law blocking the expansion of popular virtual charter schools. It’s a place where charter schools, performance pay for teachers and other reforms strongly supported by President Obama and his education secretary, Arne Duncan, are disdained by most of the educational establishment.
Yes, there are Oregon schools, and some entire districts, doing creative, impressive things. The Oregonian’s Betsy Hammond last week described the tremendous effort by teachers and administrators that led Clackamas High School to become the largest high school in Oregon to reach every federal performance target. There are many other pioneering, innovative efforts in places such as Redmond, Forest Grove, Sherwood, Beaverton and Tillamook
Speaking of Fine Arts: 2009 Suzuki Camp @ UW-Stevens Point
Madison Public Schools’ Arts education gets needed support
Anne Katz & Barbara Schrank, co-chairwomen, MMSD Arts Task Force, via a kind reader’s email:
Kudos and thanks to the Madison School District Board of Education and Superintendent Dan Nerad for their support of arts education opportunities for all students, with additional thanks to members of the Arts Education Task Force.
The task force of art teachers and citizens has worked since 2007 with Board members and administrative and teaching staff on a plan that supports, enhances and sustains arts education in Madison’s public schools. The Board approved the plan on July 20.
In adopting the plan, the Board showed support of the arts as a priority for a quality public education.
The process took hard work by committee members, administrative and teaching staff and input from over 1,000 community members who have been thoughtful, inquisitive and dedicated to nurturing students’ talent and creativity through the arts. These plans will move forward with leadership, support and a strong partnership between the district and the community.
We are proud to live in a community with educational leaders who understand that arts and creativity are essential components of a 21st century education.
1 Year Summary of Madison’s Implementation of “Standards Based Report Cards”
- 28K PDF Cover Memo from Teaching & Learning Director Lisa Wachtel and Pam Nash, Assistant Superintendent for Secondary Schools
- Teachers’ interpretations of standards-based grading and reporting: Learning a new language and culture – 511K PDF by Sara Hagen. Hagen will speak at the District’s upcoming leadership conference [100K PDF]:
[She] recently completed a Master’s degree in Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. For her Master’s thesis project, she interviewed and surveyed MMSD middle school teachers about the first semester of implementation of standards-based grading. Ms. Hagen is a National Board Certified Teacher of Spanish, which she taught at the high school and middle school levels in Bloomington, Indiana, and Chantilly, Virginia, for eight years.
- First Year Implementation Issues and Continual Improvement Efforts [300K PDF] by Teaching & Learning Director Lisa Wachtel.
- Survey responses & comments [1.4MB PDF] by Melissa Sherfinski, who is working on her PhD. at the University of Wisconsin School of Education
Notes and links on “Standards Based Report Cards” here.
Proposed Madison School District Talented & Gifted Plan
Madison School District Superintendent Dan Nerad’s memo [100K PDF] on the Proposed Talented & Gifted Plan [1.2MB PDF]:
Background
Wisconsin Administrative Rule 8.01 (2)(t)2 states that each school district shall establish a plan and designate a person to coordinate the gifted and talented program. The previous Talented and Gifted (TAG) Plan approved by the Madison Metropolitan School District (MMSD) Board was in 1991. 2008-09 highlighted several independent yet related events which served to underscore both the urgency of and District-wide benefit for an updated Plan. Among the events that converged to result in the need to update the Talented and Gifted Plan were:
- Superintendent Dr. Daniel Nerad was hired in July 2008. Dr. Nerad recognized the need for addressing the issues related to Talented and Gifted programming;
- The last TAG Plan (1991) approved by the District was found by the DPI to be out of compliance;
- An increase in open enrollment leaving the District spurred conversation regarding strategies to attract and retain students;
- Families leaving the District were surveyed to gather information regarding their reasons for leaving MMSD. A desire for improved Talented and Gifted programming was one of several emerging themes; and
- A new Strategic Plan was developed through extensive community involvement. The Strategic Plan clearly demands a rigorous and challenging education for all students.
Process In response to the events described above, the Superintendent charged the Teaching & Learning TAG Division to develop a process to create an updated Plan. The TAG Division met on a regular basis to define major areas for improvement in alignment with the National Association for Gifted Children standards. A Talented and Gifted Advisory Committee comprised of 30 members was convened in early spring. This group met five times between February and June to provide input and critique the evolving draft. The Superintendent and TAG Coordinator hosted a community input session on March 26. Senior Management, Instructional Council and Principals reviewed drafts and provided input. In order to ensure a timely and high quality Plan, a subcommittee of the Talented and Gifted Advisory Committee was invited to continue to work with TAG staff to complete the Plan during June and July.
There have been significant challenges in the process leading to the development of the enclosed plan. These challenges include communication, changes in leadership and an evolving level of District and community trust in MMSD’s commitment to providing high quality education for all stUdents. Overcoming these challenges is an on-going process, one captured in the language of the plan with respect to continual improvement. Although there are aspects of current MMSD talented and gifted programming that are sound and valued, the need for overall structural improvements and re-vitalization is recognized byal!.
In addition to the TAG Division staff, we sincerely appreciate the members of the TAG Advisory Committee for their extraordinary gift of time and dedication toward creating this plan. Special recognition goes to TAG Advisory Subcommittee members Kerry Berns, Bettine Lipman, Laurie Frost, Chris Gomez Schmidt and Carole Trone for their continuing support and input through the final draft of this plan.
MMSD Strategic Planning The enclosed TAG Plan aligns, supports and strengthens important aspects of the Strategic Plan. In particular, the TAG Plan undergirds District-wide efforts to: enhance assessments to guide appropriate levels of instruction; accelerate learning for all students; embed differentiation as core practice in all classrooms; and map and develop a comprehensive and articulated curriculum K-12 in order to increase curricular rigor for all students.
Executive Plan Summary Based upon the framework set forth by the National Association for Gifted and Children standards and areas identified by MMSD for improvement, eight key goal areas addressed in this Plan are:
An Education Lived
David Steiner [PDF], via a kind reader’s email:
Two lucky accidents served to take this education out of the realms of the ordinary.
First, the Perse had, years earlier, been home to a remarkable teacher of English who had invented something called the “mummery system.” The English classrooms had as a result been converted into mummeries–small theatres complete with stages, costumes, lights, and sound. Four mornings a week, half the class would perform scenes from Shakespeare while the other half would watch and then critique. On some of these days, we would instead have to recite poems or engage in debates with our classmates. On the fifth day we would discuss other readings or study grammar. I owe much to those many hours of oral presentations–it gave me the skills I would one day use in the Oxford Union Society, and a life-long ease with the demands of public speaking. More importantly, acting Shakespeare gave us a familiarity with those plays that went well beyond what was available through reading alone.
The second piece of luck was our history teacher, one “Charlie T,” a gentleman of indeterminate age, whose grimy ancient gown trailing halfway down his torn tweed jacket belied a mind of brittle precision, extraordinary passion, and relentlessly demanding standards. Only once in the seven years in which I studied with Mr. T. did I see him use notes (during a lecture on some military campaigns in Turkey). His memory for detail rivaled any I have ever encountered, and his ability to weave these details into compelling accounts left an indelible impression. Several of Mr. T.’s students would later become noted historians–one of international renown. While my pre-O level years–marred by dyslexia–passed with no sign of academic distinction, Charlie T.’s teaching produced a hint of better to come.
David Steiner is the new New York State Commissioner of Education.
Depth vs. Breadth
The school year is approaching, and teachers around the nation are trying not to think too much about tweaking our courses for the next go-round. Most of us have been blowing it off for months and we really have to give it some thought here in early August. Part of my current focus is inspired by an article printed in the Washington Post this past February. Jay Matthews wrote on the age old educators’ debate of breadth vs depth:
The debate goes like this: Should they focus on a few topics so students have time to absorb and comprehend the inner workings of the subject? Or should they cover every topic so students get a sense of the whole and can later pursue those parts that interest them most?
The truth, of course, is that students need both. Teachers try to mix the two in ways that make sense to them and their students. But a surprising study — certain to be a hot topic in teacher lounges and education schools — is providing new data that suggest educators should spend much more time on a few issues and let some topics slide.One of the (probably) unintended side effects to standardized testing is that teachers get together to parse the numbers and figure out what they can afford to skip over in our subjects. Standardized tests become predictable to some degree, enough that teachers can figure out which chapters are valued and which ones are not. In fact, that’s the whole point–make sure that every teacher knows what chapters are considered the most important. Make sure they know to cover those topics well.
Charter Schools Eschew Teacher Tenure
The agreement between teachers and management at the North Central Charter Essential School is similar to one that may be found at almost any traditional public school. There is a salary scale with lanes and steps, and stipends for extra duties. Some teachers serve as representatives for the larger group in a “collaborative bargaining process.”
Absent from the school’s teachers’ employee handbook, however, is a clause that gives veteran teachers job protection. “Professional status,” more commonly known as tenure, doesn’t exist there. Everyone is an employee at will, and a teacher of 10 years can be dismissed as easily as a first-year educator.
“If a teacher is not a fit, we have to be honest about that,” said Patricia May, principal of the Fitchburg school. “That’s not working for anybody.”
Having no union affiliations appears to be working for the area’s charter schools. Despite a full-court press from the state’s second largest teachers union, charter schools in Central Massachusetts haven’t hopped onto the union bandwagon. Statewide, only one charter school has signed up with the American Federation of Teachers in the two years the organization has been approaching charters, which are publicly financed but operate outside of school districts.
F in Exams
Q: What happens to a boy when he reaches puberty?
A: He says goodbye to childhood and enters adultery.
Q: How can you prevent milk turning sour?
A: Keep it in the cow.
We’ve all been there. You’ve been studying hard, the day of the BIG test arrives, you turn over the paper, and ‘what the *&%@ does that mean?!’ Not a clue.
Some students, rather than admit defeat, choose to adopt a more creative approach to answering those particularly awkward exam questions.
Packed full of hilarious examples, this book will bring a smile to the face of teachers, parents and students alike – and anyone who’s ever had to sit a test.
Confucianism at large in Africa
A features writer for the Economist once insisted that the Mandarin character for Africa means “wrong continent”. This is perhaps because there is a perception that the teachers have frequently been wrong-headed about Africa, and have tended to get it wrong whenever they have moved out of their comfort zones in trading and infrastructure development.
Such a view is not entirely right, and China has in recent years taken great pains to show the world that it is a well-rounded emerging power with a complete strategy for engagement in places like Africa.
Its Confucius institutes are an interesting feature in this show of sophistication. The Hanban – the Chinese National Office for teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language – began spreading them from 2004 when it set up the first one in the South Korean capital of Seoul.
Top Chinese officials have made no effort to disguise the propaganda value they perceive in the spread of the institutes, but so far very little in the way of a coherent strategy has emerged as to how they can be integrated into the mainstream of Chinese foreign policy, which nowadays is driven, as everyone knows, by a mercantilist view of global politics and economics. Africa has not been spared this ambiguity.
Quick! Tell Us What KUTGW Means
Kate Washburn didn’t know what to make of the email a friend sent to her office with the abbreviation “NSFW” written at the bottom. Then she clicked through the attached sideshow, titled “Awkward Family Photos.” It included shots of a family in furry “nude” suits and of another family alongside a male walrus in a revealing pose.
After looking up NSFW on NetLingo.com–a Web site that provides definitions of Internet and texting terms–she discovered what it stood for: “Not safe for work.”
“If I would have known it wasn’t safe for work, I wouldn’t have taken the chance of being inappropriate,” says Ms. Washburn, 37 years old, a media consultant in Grand Rapids, Mich.
As text-messaging shorthand becomes increasingly widespread in emails, text messages and Tweets, people like Ms. Washburn are scrambling to decode it. In many offices, a working knowledge of text-speak is becoming de rigueur. And at home, parents need to know the lingo in order to keep up with–and sometimes police–their children.
Milwaukee Public Schools targeted in complaint over instruction of English as second language
Milwaukee Public Schools is not complying with civil rights law in effectively teaching English to Spanish-speaking students, according to a federal complaint filed by the League of United Latin American Citizens of Wisconsin.
The complaint, filed at the Office of Civil Rights in the U. S. Department of Education office in Chicago, claims MPS and the Milwaukee School Board are not complying with the Civil Rights Act.
The district receives federal funds for teaching English to students who speak another language, and the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that school districts must help such students overcome language barriers so they can succeed in all of their classes, said Darryl Morin, state director of LULAC.
“LULAC of Wisconsin has serious concerns regarding the education theory, programming and resources allocated to these efforts at MPS,” he said.
Morin said MPS has used uncertified and unqualified teachers in the program.
The U.S. Department of Education confirmed that its Office of Civil Rights has received the complaint. Jim Bradshaw, a spokesman for the department in Washington, D.C., said the office is evaluating the complaint to determine whether an investigation is appropriate. The evaluation process should take about a month, he said.
MPS spokeswoman Roseann St. Aubin said district officials can’t comment because they just received the complaint Tuesday and have not reviewed it.
IB Teacher Takes Risks, With Impressive Results
The nation’s most important education policymakers are holding news conferences these days. President Obama and Education Secretary Arne Duncan have announced that they want states to strengthen their standards so more students will be ready for college. Dozens of governors have signed on to a plan to align their states’ required high school courses so all graduates are prepared for the shock of big papers and two-hour exams at the college of their choice.
Yet in my experience, the most effective work getting high-schoolers ready for higher education is being done by classroom teachers in a thousand different ways as they adjust their rules and experiment with ideas. The innovative teachers I know would laugh if anyone suggested that they call a news conference. They are just trying stuff, they say.
To get a taste of this stealth reform, step into Room 252 at J.E.B. Stuart High School in Fairfax County. That’s where Bill Horkan works. The 44-year-old math teacher is a busy man. He is married, with three children ages 6, 8 and 9. His school has the largest portion of disadvantaged students in the county — 58 percent are low-income. Many of them yearn for a good education, but learning is hard, and math is a particularly daunting challenge.
What has the overburdened Horkan done about this? Last year, he loaded up Room 252 with even more students taking one of the most challenging math courses for students like his — International Baccalaureate Math Studies. Designed for students who are not planning to major in college math or science, the course offers advanced math topics related to technology.
For Today’s Graduate, Just One Word: Statistics
At Harvard, Carrie Grimes majored in anthropology and archaeology and ventured to places like Honduras, where she studied Mayan settlement patterns by mapping where artifacts were found. But she was drawn to what she calls “all the computer and math stuff” that was part of the job.
“People think of field archaeology as Indiana Jones, but much of what you really do is data analysis,” she said.
Now Ms. Grimes does a different kind of digging. She works at Google, where she uses statistical analysis of mounds of data to come up with ways to improve its search engine.
Ms. Grimes is an Internet-age statistician, one of many who are changing the image of the profession as a place for dronish number nerds. They are finding themselves increasingly in demand — and even cool.
“I keep saying that the sexy job in the next 10 years will be statisticians,” said Hal Varian, chief economist at Google. “And I’m not kidding.”
Fixing D.C.’s Schools: The Charter Experiment
Dan Keating & Theola Labbe-DeBose:
A 2008 Post review finds that charter schools are outperforming public schools.
NPR:
As part of the program’s ongoing series focusing on education, host Michel Martin talks to Kavitha Cardoza, a reporter for NPR member station WAMU-FM in Washington, D.C.
Cardoza explains a significant development in the education world: recent test scores of public school children in the nation’s capital notably surpassed their charter school counterparts, adding yet another layer to the national debate on the value of charter schools vs. public schools.
Education reforms will never work unless teaching attracts more high-fliers
“I SET up a Fantasy Football competition between some of my toughest pupils,” one young man explains. “They get goal-keeping points for good attendance, and defence points for behaving well. Good punctuation and spelling translate into their midfield performance, and coming up with good ideas, into attack.” Around the room, pens scribble furiously. “Pupil X hated me,” a woman tells the group; she describes how she changed that with weekly phone calls to his parents and postcards praising his (intermittent) good behaviour. More notes are made.
This is the Teach First summer institute: six weeks in Canterbury, a southern cathedral city, at the end of which nearly 500 new university graduates will teach full-time, for £15,000 ($24,500) a year, in some of England’s toughest schools. The 360 who started the programme last year are here too, handing on to the raw recruits their tips for coping with bad behaviour and keeping lessons fresh, and demonstrating to their tutors what they have learned. In another year, those old hands will be qualified teachers, trained on the job and in tutorials and summer schools.
Recruiting the right kind of teachers has been difficult in England for some time, and though recession has brought temporary relief, the task is getting bigger as those hired to teach the baby boom near retirement. Head teachers, worn down by constant official policy changes and an avalanche of paperwork, are retiring early. A study in 2007 by McKinsey, a consultancy, concluded that countries whose students perform well tend to recruit teachers from the top of the class. But a recent report by Politeia, a think-tank, found that the bar for getting into teacher training in England is, by international standards, unusually low. Trainee teachers can resit basic literacy and numeracy tests as often as they like–and 13% need at least three goes at the latter. Around 1,200 each year graduated with the lowest class of degree, a third.
Internal NEA Report on Performance Pay Calls for “Creating a Positive
ver since candidate Barack Obama began promoting the concept of performance pay in 2007, the National Education Association has labored to generate a coherent strategy to stay ahead of the issue. The union realizes a consistent “no, no, no” may be satisfying and direct, but is harmful to its public image and its relationship with moderate Democrats and Republicans alike.
Last year, NEA assigned its teacher quality department to visit six locations that had established alternative compensation models and to interview union officers, members and staff to determine the lessons and pitfalls of various approaches. The results were compiled in a 51-page report (labeled “Not For External Distribution” and “intended for NEA leaders and staff only”) titled Alternative Compensation Models and Our Members. I have uploaded the document to EIA’s Declassified page.
The six locations were the local school districts of Denver and Eagle County, Colorado, Hamilton County, Tennessee, Helena, Montana, and Manitowoc, Wisconsin, along with the state of Minnesota, which has its statewide Q Comp program.
Reactions to the programs were all over the map, with some teachers loving the new system and others hating it, but a few common sentiments were expressed. The most important of these was the lack of simplicity. Many teachers didn’t understand exactly how their pay or bonuses were being generated and were forced to trust the district administrators to correctly apply and compute the pay. This is problematic for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is knowing how much should be in your check each pay period. This complexity makes the clarity of the traditional salary schedule more appealing by comparison.
Duncan Wields $100 Billion to Make U.S. Schools Like Chicago’s
Sue Duncan has taught poor kids at her after-school center on Chicago’s South Side for 48 years. She says her son Arne spent seven days a week there as he was growing up.
“It was absolutely formative,” Arne Duncan, 44, said of working with his mother. He learned that “kids from totally dysfunctional home situations, total poverty, can do extraordinarily well if we give them a chance.”
What he absorbed matters because Duncan is now U.S. education secretary, in charge of improving a public school system that ranks below those of other developed nations in some studies. He’s armed with $100 billion in stimulus money from his friend, President Barack Obama, more than twice the budget of any of his predecessors.
“We want to put unprecedented resources out there, but the tradeoff is unprecedented reform,” said Duncan, who ran Chicago’s public schools before taking on the U.S. job in January. He said in an interview he wants to “fundamentally change the status quo” by raising academic standards, holding states and schools more accountable, and luring “the best and the brightest” into teaching.
Cramming a Lot Into a Youthful Literary Life
Nick McDonell ought to be an easy person to dislike. He is young, smart, good looking and ridiculously well connected. His father is Terry McDonell, the editor of Sports Illustrated, and he grew up in the kind of gilded New York household where Joan Didion, Jay McInerney and George Plimpton were drop-in guests. His godfather is Morgan Entrekin, the publisher of Grove/Atlantic, who bought Mr. McDonell’s first novel, “Twelve,” when Mr. McDonell was just 18. He heard news of its acceptance while cruising home in the carpool from Riverdale Country School, where he was president of the student body. Hunter S. Thompson, another family friend, came through with a timely blurb, saying, “I’m afraid he will do for his generation what I did for mine.”
Nick McDonell on the New York set of “Twelve,” the movie based on his first novel.
If that weren’t insufferable enough, Mr. McDonell, now 25, has a third novel, “An Expensive Education,” being published on Wednesday by Atlantic Monthly, and “Twelve,” meanwhile, is being made into a movie starring Kiefer Sutherland, Chace Crawford and 50 Cent. On your way to meet Mr. McDonell you can find yourself half-hoping that he might be dinged by a pedicab — not seriously, but enough to give him a limp, say, or an embarrassing facial tic.
As it happens, though, he is the kind 0f overly well-behaved person who waits for the light to change even when there is no traffic. He is also shy, earnest, a little naïve, disarmingly modest, polite almost to a fault. And he writes so well that his connections are beside the point. In The New York Times the book critic Michiko Kakutani said that “Twelve,” which is about the downward-spiraling adventures of some druggy New York private-school students over Christmas break, was “as fast as speed, as relentless as acid.” “An Expensive Education” ingeniously combines elements of a le Carré or Graham Greene-like international thriller with a campus novel set at Harvard, from which Mr. McDonell graduated in 2007. There are scenes of double-crossing C.I.A. activities in Somalia, as well as of campus rush parties and two cocktail-swilling guys who are famous on campus for ironically wearing tuxedos all the time — the college-age versions, perhaps, of two adolescent stoners in “Twelve” who are always saying things like “Shiz fo a niz!”
Hawaii schools’ failure to meet benchmarks troubles officials
ducation officials have few explanations for what they consider to be a disturbing trend — year after year Hawai’i’s high schools struggle to make “adequate yearly progress” under the federal No Child Left Behind law.
Just three of Hawai’i’s 33 regular public high schools were able to demonstrate sufficient progress under the federal mandate this year: Campbell, Kaiser and Kalani.
“It’s a multitude of reasons. One is the rigor of the federal mandate. But also, in high school, kids are dealing with a lot of different issues,” said Gerald Teramae, principal of Kalani High School. “It’s tough. The kids are older, they have different agendas.”
While Kalani was one of the high schools to make AYP this year, that doesn’t mean the school is not struggling under the federal law, Teramae said.
Ninety percent of Kalani’s students demonstrated proficiency in reading, but only 48 percent of its students demonstrated proficiency in math concepts. That’s just two points above the state mandated benchmark of 46 percent.
What have private schools done for (some of) us?
Royal Statistical Society: Significance:
Many parents in Britain make huge financial sacrifices to send their children to private schools. Are those sacrifices worthwhile? What return, if any, do they get? Do their children end up in better careers, earning more, than if they have been educated at the expense of the state?Francis Green, Stephen Machin, Richard Murphy and Yu Zhu examine who exactly benefits from the privileges of the Old School Tie.
Via Mrs. Moneypenny.
Breakthrough Cincinnati:
Believing in the Power of Young People:
Breakthrough Cincinnati is a four year, tuition free academic enrichment program that offers both summer and school year programs for under-served Cincinnati public middle school students. Breakthrough students apply in the fifth grade (sixth and seventh graders are welcome to apply, but spots are limited) and attend through the summer preceding their 9th grade year.
School Year Program
Starting in the fall of 2009, Breakthrough Cincinnati will be offering twice a week tutoring, homework help and academic enrichment lessons for all students who participated in the Summer Academic Session. Breakthrough Cincinnati is actively recruiting talented high school and college students to serve as teachers in this program. Please click on the link on the left-hand side of this page for more information on the school year program, including teacher application forms.
In addition, Breakthrough Cincinnati will be hosting a High School information Night and a Reunion Party in the fall. Information on these events will be mailed home and posted on the News and Events section of this web-site as it becomes available.
Outsourcing Teaching, Overseas
How to teach university degree programs offered overseas is a complicated question. Does a university rely on faculty from the home campus to travel abroad for a year, semester or month at a time to teach, hire a new cadre of faculty at the overseas location, deliver coursework through distance education, or some combination thereof?
In offering B.S. in economics degrees at three partner universities in China and Hong Kong, Utah State University’s Jon M. Huntsman School of Business uses a different kind of teaching model, similar in some ways to the three approaches but with a significant, and potentially risky, twist. The programs are based on a lead professor/local facilitator model, in which the professors of record at Utah State rely on local instructors, who are not Utah State employees (but are approved by Utah State departments) to deliver much of the course content on the ground.
The degrees in question are Utah State degrees, as opposed to joint or dual degrees with the partner universities, and the arrangement is described in the business school’s 2008-9 annual report thus: “Departments assign ‘lead professors’ to write the course syllabus, pick the text book and other instructional materials, and to write exams and other assignments for the course. The teaching materials are provided to ‘local facilitators’ (faculty at our partner institutions) who have been approved by the USU department to deliver the lectures and other course material on-site in China and Hong Kong. Lead professors and local facilitators are in contact each week to make sure that the courses are on-track and to deal with teaching and evaluation issues. Final grades are assigned by the lead professor.” In other words, the instructor who interacts with the students face-to-face on a regular basis doesn’t have the ultimate grading authority, but the professor back in Utah does.
