Independent public schools may be getting a chance in the Bay State
MASSACHUSETTS ranks at or near the top of national measures of how well schoolchildren do at reading and mathematics. A leader in early-years education, it is also applauded for its vocational, technical and agriculture schools. Still, there are problems. The disparity between students in affluent districts and those in low-income urban ones is shocking. In the Concord/Carlisle school district, for instance, 92% of students graduated from high-school on time and planned to attend a four-year college or university in 2007, compared with just 12.8% in Holyoke, one of the poorest cities in the state.
Many states have turned to charter schools (self-governing publicly-funded schools) to close achievement gaps like that, but charters are a tricky subject in Massachusetts even though the few they do have, such as Boston Collegiate, are among the best in the country. Unions abhor them while the school boards that run most public schools fear losing power and funding. Politicians have been unwilling to take on Massachusetts’s mighty unions.
Last year Deval Patrick, the self-styled “education governor” of the state, unveiled a 55-point plan to overhaul the state’s education system. The governor’s package includes the introduction of three types of “readiness schools” to turn around poorly performing districts. Like charters, they will have greater flexibility, autonomy and will be held accountable for their results. But they will not be fully independent, remaining under the control of local school boards. Mr Patrick will introduce a bill authorising these schools later this month. One sort would have an external partner, such as a university, while another would be teacher-led.
Connecticut Schools, Charters, Politics, Parents and the Achievement Gap
Connecticut is another Northern state where achievement gaps are larger than in states across the South, the federal study shows. That is partly because white students in Connecticut score above the national average, but also because blacks there score lower, on average, than blacks elsewhere”.
This validates my personal belief, and something that I have been saying for several years now, that Connecticut does not have great public schools, rather, it has one of if not the highest percentages of households with 4-year and advanced college degrees (CT, NJ and MA are always at the top of this list). This high percentage of well educated households makes Connecticut’s public schools look good — it is the household that is the difference maker, not the public schools. To prove my point, why is it that not one DRG B school does not outperform just one DRG A school?…or just one DRG C school out perform just one DRG B school?…makes no sense if the school were in fact the difference maker. DRG = Demographic Reference Group which is how the Dept. of Ed. here in CT groups all of its school districts to rate performance and other statistical data. It is generally rated by median household income but size of the community and other socioeconomic factors are part of the equation too. A = the most wealthy communities (also the “best” schools) and it goes down form there.
…it is all about socio-economics not how great Connecticut’s public schools are, which they are not.
Connecticut’s high-performing, public charter schools are making a difference, and that is an objective statement based on proven data.
We should do everything in our powers to embrace the proven Achievement First (Amistad Academy) model and replicate it far and wide. Why it is being stiff-armed by our legislators and the teachers union is simply bewildering. But then again both have proven to put their interests (political careers and pay checks) first and Connecticut’s children second — the teachers union is particularly good at that.
Teaching Kids About Money the Hard Way
It’s getting harder for parents to raise financially independent young adults.
Many banks refuse to open individual checking accounts for 16- and 17-year-olds, requiring parents to jointly own the account, even if the youngsters have a job. Colleges urge parents to link their bank accounts or credit cards to the prepaid cash cards that double as their students’ ID cards, to ensure a regular flow of funds from the Bank of Mom and Dad.
And under the new credit-card law that goes into effect early next year–part of a broader move toward aggressive consumer protection–parents of those under 21 will have to agree to take responsibility for their kids’ credit cards unless the young applicants can show they have the income to qualify.
All of this seems to encourage parents to interfere with–and maybe even bail out–these young adults. And it comes at an age when the youngsters themselves should be taking on personal responsibility and making their own financial decisions.
Connecticut owns one of nation’s largest black-white achievement gaps
AP, via a kind reader’s email:
Despite unprecedented efforts to improve minority achievement in the past decade, the gap between black and white students remains frustratingly wide, according to an Education Department report released Tuesday.
There is good news in the report: Reading and math scores are improving for black students across the country. But because white students are also improving, the disparity between blacks and whites has lessened only slightly.
On average, the gap narrowed by about 7 points from 1992 to 2007, so that black students scored about 28 points behind white students on a 500-point scale.
More on Obama and Community Colleges
There’s a joke among snooty Boston-area high-school kids: If they don’t get good grades, they’ll end up at Cape Cod Community College, or “4 C’s by the Sea.” In suburban Washington, D.C., the punch line is Maryland’s Montgomery College, or “M.K.” for short. Kids in Houston use San Jacinto College, long known as “Harvard on the Highway.”
Community colleges don’t get a lot of respect. Except, as of this week, from President Obama. In a speech Tuesday in Warren, Mich., he proposed sinking nearly $12 billion into revamping the country’s community-college system. The plan would provide $9 billion in grant money to boost academic programs and raise graduation rates, plus another $2.5 billion to upgrade school facilities. It would also fund open-source online courses so that schools don’t have to build more classrooms to admit more students.
Study: Achievement gap persists in Minnesota, rest of U.S.
A new report from the U.S. Education Department shows black students are scoring better in math and reading, but not enough to close a nationwide gap between them and white students.
The study also shows Minnesota has one of the nation’s largest achievement gaps, but not necessarily for the reasons you might think.
The study looked at fourth and eighth-grade math and reading scores from a nationwide achievement test called the NAEP.
The test is scored on a 500-point scale. Of the students the study looked at, black students scored 26-to-31 points below white students in reading and math.
The study concludes that every state still has an achievement gap, but at least that gap isn’t getting any bigger. Fifteen states saw their gap shrink on fourth-grade math, but not a single state has narrowed the gap in eighth-grade reading.
The disparity, though, is not caused by black students getting worse. Scores for blacks continue to improve, but they’re also improving for white students. Researchers note it’s hard to close the gap when everyone is improving.
Minnesota, meanwhile, has one of the nation’s largest achievement gaps. But again, that’s not necessarily because blacks are slipping, according to Jim Angermeyr, the head of research for Bloomington schools.
Education Reform
There is a lot of talk in California right now about how the budget crisis will affect education investments, and I write investments very deliberately because education spending is a form of investment that is supposed to yield future returns. It’s evident that we’ll have to deal with the budget hole by cutting education spending rather dramatically, in fact it is absolutely unavoidable because education spending is about 50% of the state budget and when you include all of the other initiative mandated spending, the state government controls less than 20% of the actual budget… with a $26b hole in the budget the state could cut every dollar spent on things not mandated by voters and there would still be a deficit.
Okay, so we’re going to have a less generously funded school system, a system that already competes for last place in the country in terms of educational quality. There is also the reality that we will dramatically reduce our funding for community colleges and at the same time raise fees, a reality for the California State University system and the University of California system.
While we are going through this fiscal realignment is it not also appropriate to ask what we are getting out of our education system? K-12 is a basket case and parents with economic means opt out of the system while those on lower income tiers are effectively denied something every child deserves, a quality education.
A failing grade for Maryland math
Maryland’s public schools are teaching mathematics in such a way that many graduates cannot be placed in entry-level college math classes because they do not have a grasp of the basics, according to education experts and professors.
College math professors say there is a gap between what is taught in the state’s high schools and what is needed in college. Many schools have de-emphasized drilling students in basic math, such as multiplication and division, they say.
“We have hordes of students who come in and have forgotten their basic arithmetic,” said Donna McKusick, dean for developmental education at the Community College of Baltimore County. College professors say students are taught too early to rely on calculators. “You say, ‘What is seven times seven?’ and they don’t know,” McKusick said.
Ninety-eight percent of Baltimore students signing up for classes at Baltimore City Community College had to pay for remedial classes to learn the material that should have been covered in high school. Across Maryland, 49 percent of the state’s high school graduates take remedial classes in college before they can take classes for credit.
Your e-mail has emerged as a winner of £500,000.00 GBP (Five hundred thousand British Pounds) in our on-going Google Promotion
Library of Congress Vatican Exhibit:
Classical Roots of the Scientific Revolution.
For over a thousand years–from the fifth century B.C. to the fifth century A.D.–Greek mathematicians maintained a splendid tradition of work in the exact sciences: mathematics, astronomy, and related fields. Though the early synthesis of Euclid and some of the supremely brilliant works of Archimedes were known in the medieval west, this tradition really survived elsewhere. In Byzantium, the capital of the Greek-speaking Eastern empire, the original Greek texts were copied and preserved. In the Islamic world, in locales that ranged from Spain to Persia, the texts were studied in Arabic translations and fundamental new work was done. The Vatican Library has one of the richest collections in the world of the products of this tradition, in all its languages and forms. Both the manuscripts that the Vatican collected and the work done on them in Rome proved vital to the recovery of ancient science–which, in turn, laid the foundation for the Scientific Revolution of the 16th and 17th centuries. In the Roman Renaissance, science and humanistic scholarship were not only not enemies; they were natural allies.
Remembering Apollo 11
40 years ago, three human beings – with the help of many thousands of others – left our planet on a successful journey to our Moon, setting foot on another world for the first time. Tomorrow marks the 40th anniversary of the July 16, 1969 launch of Apollo 11, with astronauts Neil A. Armstrong, Michael Collins and Edwin E. “Buzz” Aldrin Jr. aboard. The entire trip lasted only 8 days, the time spent on the surface was less than one day, the entire time spent walking on the moon, a mere 2 1/2 hours – but they were surely historic hours. Scientific experiments were deployed (at least one still in use today), samples were collected, and photographs were taken to document the entire journey. Collected here are 40 images from that journey four decades ago, when, in the words of astronaut Buzz Aldrin: “In this one moment, the world came together in peace for all mankind”. (40 photos total)
Wonk alert! More details on Obama’s community college proposal
Wonk alert! I’m posting additional background information on the community college initiative that President Obama announced today, along with a link to the Council of Economic Advisers report, out Monday, called Preparing the Workers of Today for the Jobs of Tomorrow.
The name of Obama’s proposal: The American Graduation Initiative
The cost: see what I’ve underlined below.
The four main features:
Apollo 11 by numbers
Almost 40 years since the first Moon landing on July 20 1969, the Apollo space programme remains one of the most eye-catching achievements in the history of science.
The anniversary also brings back glorious memories for Nasa, the US space agency formed more than 50 years ago, and the programme’s success contrasts with the relatively pedestrian activities that space agencies perform today.
Here, the Financial Times takes a look back at the Apollo programme through figures. Click on each number to see how it fits into the story of the mission.
Helping Students, in and Out of School
Letters to the NY Times Editor:
“Lessons for Failing Schools” (editorial, July 6) says Education Secretary Arne Duncan, with a $100 billion educational stimulus fund at his disposal, is right to focus on transforming 5,000 low-performing schools that account for the majority of minority dropouts. But if it were that easy — just a matter of spending money — the country would have probably done it long ago.
What we are facing is more than a school problem caused by the schools alone. It is a pervasive set of problems in some minority communities, including fatherless households, teenage dropout mothers, drugs and a culture that disparages education, along with some incredibly poor teaching.
The first thing Mr. Duncan should do is to ensure that minority children and their families who really want to do well and are trying hard get the opportunity to escape to charter and other schools so they aren’t dragged down by the mass failures we are witnessing in public urban education.
Children of the credit revolution
Andy Slater, a 22-year-old delivery driver in London, appears oblivious to the fact that the UK is suffering its worst recession since the second world war.
“You gotta have new trainers ain’t you? Nike, Adidas, Lacoste – whatever looks good,” he says, eyeing up the latest models in the Westfield shopping mall in west London.
He is not alone in his opinion. In a survey conducted by the US-based Westfield group in May, 70 per cent of its shoppers aged between 18 and 35 said they were spending the same or more on clothes and eating out.
Slaves to fashion and free of most financial commitments, young people have kept spending in economic downturns when others have cut back. But today’s younger generation is particularly flush with cash and, after growing up during the credit boom, spending is deeply ingrained.
As a result, retailers geared towards the youth market – particularly clothing chains – have been basking in their good fortune.
State lags in closing achievement gap
Wisconsin lags behind the rest of the nation in closing the achievement gap between black and white students, according to a U.S. Department of Education report released Tuesday.
Based on data from 2007, the National Assessment of Education Progress study shows some academic improvement among black and white students nationwide, with the gap in test scores between the two groups narrowing in a number of states. Wisconsin stands out as the only state with a racial achievement gap wider than the national average in all four categories measured: math for grades four and eight, and reading for grades four and eight.
Scores among black Wisconsin students were lower than their national peers in all four categories. White students in Wisconsin scored slightly above the national average in math, but below the national average for reading in grade four. The largest gap between white and black Wisconsin students was in math at grade eight, with a 45-point difference between their test scores on a 0-500 point scale.
…….
Closing the achievement gap is important to the Madison School District, said district spokesman Ken Syke.
“It’s not a zero-sum situation,” Syke said. “As we work to raise the achievement level of students of color, we still work as educators to continue to raise the achievement level of students who are not of color. It’s not like if you’re pouring resources into one you’re not pouring resources into the other.”
Holding one child back to make another child feel better
Andrea Hermitt
Personal story: When my son was in the first grade we had just returned to New York from New Orleans. About a month into the school year I realized that the work he was being given was identical to what he had done the year before. I decided a conference with the teacher was in order. I sat down with her and explained the situation thinking a teacher would know what to do. Instead she said to me “Do you want me to frustrate the other children?’ My response was less than cordial. Any wonder why we homeschool now?
Stephanie Tolan, noted author well known advocate for extremely bright children , once said “You don’t have the moral right to hold one child back to make another child feel better.” To understand her reasoning behind the quote, you must understand that her youngest child was an extremely gifted child and that she has also spent a great deal of time working with the parents of gifted children and advocating for gifted children. An interview of Ms. Tolan tells of her child being humiliating in school as a result of his advanced intelligence.
Back to my story: I did not know, nor do I currently have documentation that my child is gifted, but I do know that the the first grade experience continued through his time in school, and even beyond that. The first grade teacher and administration acknowledged that not only did the child already know the material he was being given, but he also easily absorbed any new information they attempted to give. They held me off by promising to have him tested for the gifted program when the time was right. However, we moved south again, and the schools in GA refused to test him. No one would admit he was possibly gifted until the day I went to de-enroll him so he could be homeschooled. The teacher asked why I would take an obviously gifted child out of school. The look on her face after she realized what she said, made it clear that I didn’t have to answer the question.
Realizing that schools are not created to cater to the individual child, is the key to parents creating the best education for their kids. This is not to say that homeschooling is the only solution to giving a child a customized education. This is to say that if parents don’t supplement outside of the classroom, your child WILL BE disserviced. This is especially true if that child is bright, talented, or gifted.
Let’s face it, schools are only given so much in resources. Because special education needs are much more apparent than gifted needs, it is the gifted students that lose out. For the most part, schools have not purposely committed a moral sin against the gifted child, but ignorance that you have committed a hit-and-run does not make the victim any less injured. Some one has to pick them up, and nurture them back to health. If the schools can’t do it, then the parents must. Still we must continue to advocate for proper education of the gifted an advanced child.
Teachers are key for students who like learning and remain curious
Greg Toppo via a kind reader’s email:
People are naturally curious, so why is school such a chore for so many kids? University of Virginia cognitive scientist Daniel Willingham set out to learn why in his new book, Why Don’t Students Like School? Part of the answer, he finds, is that thinking can be just plain hard. Unless conditions are right, we’ll actually try to avoid the process of thinking. A teacher’s challenge, the author says, is to “maximize the likelihood that students will get the pleasurable rush that comes from successful thought.” The author chats about the learning process.
Q: After all we’ve learned about the mind and brain, why is it so difficult to make school enjoyable for students?
A: School is all about mental challenge, and that is hard work, make no mistake. Still, people do enjoy mental work or, more exactly, people enjoy successful mental work. We get a snap of satisfaction when we solve a problem. But solving a problem that is trivially easy is not fun. Neither is hammering away at a problem with no sense you are making progress.
So the challenge for a teacher is to find that sweet spot of mental difficulty, and to find it simultaneously for 25 students, each with a different level of preparation. To fight this problem, teachers must engage each student with work that is appropriate for his or her level of preparation. This must be done sensitively, so that students who are behind don’t feel like second-class citizens. But the fact is they are behind, and pretending that they are not does them no favors.
Madison School Board Discussion: Private/Parochial, Open Enrollment Leave, Open Enrollment Enter, Home Based Parent Surveys
22MB mp3 audio file. A summary of the survey can be seen here. The Board and Administration are to be commended for this effort. It will be interesting to see how this initiative plays out.
Fine Arts Task Force Report Discussion – Audio
The Madison School Board’s discussion last evening via a 42MB mp3 audio file. An interesting discussion, particularly with respect to the School District’s interaction with the community and the Teaching & Learning Department. Much more on the Fine Arts Task Force here.
The Culture Wars’ New Front: U.S. History Classes in Texas
The fight over school curriculum in Texas, recently focused on biology, has entered a new arena, with a brewing debate over how much of the Bible belongs in American history classrooms.
The Texas Board of Education, which recently approved new science standards that made room for creationist critiques of evolution, is revising the state’s social studies curriculum. In early recommendations from outside experts appointed by the board, a divide has opened over how central religious theology should be to the teaching of history.
Three reviewers, appointed by social conservatives, have recommended revamping the K-12 curriculum to put the Bible, the Christian faith and the civic virtue of religion front-and-center in the study of American history. Two of them want to remove or de-emphasize references to several historical figures who have become liberal icons, such as César Chávez and Thurgood Marshall.
Why America is flunking science
Chris Mooney and Sheril Kirshenbaum:
In the recent Tom Hanks/Ron Howard film “Angels & Demons,” science sets the stage for destruction and chaos. A canister of antimatter has been stolen from CERN — the European Organization for Nuclear Research — and hidden in the Vatican, set to explode right as a new pope is about to be selected.
Striving to make these details as realistic as possible on screen, Howard and his film crew visited CERN, used one of its physicists as a science consultant, and devoted meticulous care to designing the antimatter canister that Hanks’ character, Robert Langdon, and his sexy scientist colleague, Vittoria Vetra (Ayelet Zurer), wind up searching for.
But there was nothing they could do about the gigantic impossibility at the center of the plot. While the high-energy proton collisions generated at CERN do occasionally produce minute quantities of antimatter — particles with the opposite electrical charge as protons and electrons, but the same mass, which can in turn be combined into atoms like antihydrogen — it’s not remotely enough to power a bomb. As CERN quips on a Web site devoted to “Angels & Demons,” antimatter “would be very dangerous if we could make a few grams of it, but this would take us billions of years.”
Education data system key to additional federal stimulus money
Almost like being tagged with a barcode, at some point schoolchildren in Georgia will receive a unique number that tracks their test scores and other data from the moment they enter kindergarten until they’ve graduated.
Such a data system, which would update nightly, school officials say, may sound like a pipe dream. In fact, if the state wants a crack at a huge pot of additional stimulus money from the U.S. Department of Education, that system must one day become a reality.
The money, $4 billion total in what Education Secretary Arne Duncan has dubbed the “Race to the Top” fund, will be distributed next year at Duncan’s discretion.
A strong data system is one of four measures the secretary will use in awarding the grants. The others are creating international academic standards, turning around low-performing schools and teacher quality.
Because of the sums of money involved, and because the grants will only go to a few states, the Race to the Top represents a potentially enormous payoff.
The amount of the grants or how they will be distributed is unknown at this point.
Should High Schools Bar Average Students From Rigorous College-Level Courses and Tests?
Fifteen years ago, when I discovered that many good high schools prevented average students from taking demanding courses, I thought it was a fluke, a mistake that would soon be rectified.
I had spent much time inside schools that did the opposite. They worked hard to persuade students to take challenging classes and tests, such as Advanced Placement, International Baccalaureate and Cambridge, so students would be ready for the shock of their first semester at college, which most average students attend. The results were good. Why didn’t all schools do that?
I still don’t have a satisfactory answer. It always comes up this time of year because of my annual rankings of public high schools for Newsweek, which is based on schools’ efforts to challenge average kids as measured by participation in AP, IB and Cambridge tests.
Many school superintendents and principals who run schools that restrict access to those college-level courses and tests have disappointing results on the Newsweek list. Some of them object to my methodology. It is clear from my conversations with them that they are smart and compassionate people.
New York Must Start Putting Teacher Training Schools to the Test
In the coming year New York State will play a leading role in the movement to set one high national standard for all our school children. We will look to raise the bar to require that all students leave high school not only proficient on state tests – but ready for higher education.
But it won’t be enough to simply raise standards and hope for the best. We also need to do a much better job preparing our teachers. After all, study after study confirms that teacher quality is the single most important factor in boosting student performance that is under the control of schools.
In cases when our students aren’t learning, we must start to question, among other things, the preparation of their teachers.
Improving the quality of teaching in New York will mean partnering with the institutions that train our classroom instructors – SUNY 23%, CUNY 11% and independent colleges 66%.
Still behind – Chicago Public Schools
So how are we going to know if Chicago’s public schools are succeeding?
Mayor Richard Daley and school officials boasted this week that Chicago kids’ performance on state standardized tests edged higher in all categories and all grades this year. One snapshot: 76.2 percent of 8th graders met or exceeded standards on the Illinois Standards Achievement Test.
But we’ve known for some time now that nobody can put much faith in the ISAT. In 2006, state education officials significantly changed the test. Like magic, the test results took a leap.
What really happened: Illinois responded to pressure from the federal No Child Left Behind law by deciding it was simpler to make the tests easier than make the kids smarter.
Charter Schools Aren’t the Solution for Virginia
The Obama administration and The Post are fascinated with charter schools [editorial, July 5], but charters do not make sense for Virginia. Maybe charter schools are needed in the District or Chicago, but in Virginia they are a solution looking for a problem.
The first question to consider is whether charter schools actually work. A recent study by the Rand Corp. suggests that they produce about the same results as traditional public schools.
Charter schools haven’t flourished in Virginia because our school boards already have the autonomy to create specialty schools. In the Richmond area alone we have schools that specialize in the arts; engineering; communication; languages; the humanities; technology; international studies; leadership and government; global economics; the military; science and mathematics; and technology. We have governor’s schools, magnet schools and centers for the gifted, and the list goes on and on. Virginia school boards, unlike those in states where charters have proliferated, don’t need charter legislation to allow flexibility and innovation. Our school boards have great autonomy and flexibility. They are free to innovate, and they do.
Maths dunces who don’t make the cut: Haberdashers have to reject nine out of ten applicants because they can’t add up
When the Bamberger family opened a haberdashery 65 years ago, they insisted their staff use mental arithmetic to price up customers’ purchases.
Despite the arrival of calculators, that attitude has remained unchanged over the intervening years.
But now the family finds itself facing an unexpected maths problem – most youngsters it would like to employ are incapable of working out sums in their heads.
Mathematics Learning in Early Childhood: Paths Toward Excellence and Equity
arly childhood mathematics is vitally important for young children’s present and future educational success. Research has demonstrated that virtually all young children have the capability to learn and become competent in mathematics. Furthermore, young children enjoy their early informal experiences with mathematics. Unfortunately, many children’s potential in mathematics is not fully realized, especially those children who are economically disadvantaged. This is due, in part, to a lack of opportunities to learn mathematics in early childhood settings or through everyday experiences in the home and in their communities. Improvements in early childhood mathematics education can provide young children with the foundation for school success.
Relying on a comprehensive review of the research, Mathematics Learning in Early Childhood lays out the critical areas that should be the focus of young children’s early mathematics education, explores the extent to which they are currently being incorporated in early childhood settings, and identifies the changes needed to improve the quality of mathematics experiences for young children. This book serves as a call to action to improve the state of early childhood mathematics. It will be especially useful for policy makers and practitioners-those who work directly with children and their families in shaping the policies that affect the education of young children.
Online Discussion: Teachers Unions and Professional Work
Education Sector, via a kind reader’s email:
Welcome to Education Sector’s online discussion of teachers’ work and teachers unions. Last year, we released results from a survey of public school teachers, Waiting to Be Won Over: Teachers Speak on the Profession, Unions, and Reform, which revealed a mix of opinions about the role of unions in school reform. Teachers believe unions are essential, the survey found, particularly for safeguarding jobs. But the survey also found teachers to be surprisingly open to change, and to the idea that unions should drive rather than resist reform. So what does this mean for the future of teachers unions? To delve into this further, we have assembled a group of current and recent teachers from different kinds of schools, different parts of the country, and with different views on this question.
Briefly, they are, Laura Bornfreund, a former Florida teacher who now works for Common Core, an organization focused on the liberal arts in education; Julie Eisenband, a teacher and adviser at SAGE Academy Charter School in Brooklyn Park, Minn.; Arthur Goldstein, who teaches English as a Second Language at Francis Lewis High School in Queens, N.Y.; Caitlin Hollister, a third-grade teacher from Boston Public Schools; and Bruce William Smith from Green Dot Public Schools in Los Angeles. Education policy expert Paul T. Hill from the Center on Reinventing Public Education is also joining us to provided national context and to discuss research he has done on teachers unions and charter schools. (Panelist biographies here.)
DPS gives control of lagging schools to private sector
Detroit Public Schools Emergency Financial Manager Robert Bobb announced Friday that he has hired four educational management companies to turn around 17 of the worst-performing high schools in the district, a move that marks what leaders say is the largest public school district overhaul of its kind in the nation.
“We have not been making the grade,” Bobb said at a press conference at Central High School.
School board members expressed shock and dismay Friday — just one day after they rolled out their own academic plan that they’ve asked Bobb to fund. Some accused Bobb of overstepping his bounds as a financial manager by launching an academic plan that will affect 20,000 students in three-quarters of the district’s high schools without the board’s knowledge.
The board was charged with working on the academics, while Gov. Jennifer Granholm brought in Bobb to work on the finances for a year.
“We have asked Robert Bobb to do a very difficult job and he needs the authority to do it right,” said Granholm’s spokeswoman Liz Boyd, noting Bobb is not overstepping his role. “He doesn’t need to be micromanaged.”
The district signed multiyear contracts with four out-of-state companies that will be funded through $20 million in federal stimulus dollars. The aim is to improve student achievement, discipline, respect, safety and graduation rates, district officials said.
Rubik Cube inventor devises new puzzle to drive us all to distraction
His cube was one of the most popular and infuriating toys of all time. Now Professor Ernö Rubik is hoping that the sphere will bring sleepless nights to the world’s obsessive puzzlers.
The creator of Rubik’s Cube is back with his first new puzzle for almost 20 years and early indications are that it is going to be every bit as irritating as the original.
Rubik’s 360, which goes on sale next week, features six small balls inside three interlocking spheres. The task is to lock each ball into colour-coded capsules on the outermost sphere. Professor Rubik said of his cube that it was “easy to understand the task, but hard to work out the solution”. It is just as aggravating to crack the 360.
In The Times newsroom yesterday, the angry rattles of plastic pellets signified dozens of journalists failing to coax so much as one ball from the centre of the sphere.
The Periodic Table of Videos
ables charting the chemical elements have been around since the 19th century – but this modern version has a short video about each one.
We’ve done all 118 – but our job’s not finished. Now we’re updating all the videos with new stories, better samples and bigger experiments.
Plus we’re making films about other areas of chemistry, latest news and occasional adventures away from the lab.
Task force on Minn. high schools taking shape
AP:
A task force asked to suggest ways to design an accountability system for Minnesota high schools is seeking suggestions itself.
The panel created this spring by the Legislature is soliciting advice through July 15 on the key issues it should tackle.
From there, the task force plans to produce a report on high school assessments and accountability. Preliminary recommendations could be out this fall, and the goal is to deliver a final report to the state education commissioner and lawmakers by year’s end.
Admissions 101: Are Low Grades in AP/IB Classes Better than High Grades in Regular Classes?
A few weeks ago, Jay Mathews asked readers a tough question in his Admissions 101 forum – which is better: an A or B in a regular course or a C in a more challenging course like an AP or IB class? Jay sided with AP, saying that all students interested in tier 1 or tier 2 schools should take at least 2 AP or IB courses. Even if that means a C on a high school transcript, Jay argued, colleges will appreciate a student who is willing to take on a challenge. Reader reactions have been pouring in ever since:
eloquensa: “My strategy suggestion is a little different from yours – I don’t know about the college front in the C-in-AP/IB-or-A-in-regular argument, but if the student is a little more strategic in course and teacher selection it’s a lot easier to avoid that dreaded C.
Middle Class Children in KIPP
Catharine Bellinger, a Princeton sophomore who has plans to start a campus journal on education policy.
I suggested she practice with a topic provocative enough to get her in trouble, a good place for all writers to be. My question to her, inspired by her experiences in the D.C. schools, is: “Should middle class parents send their kids to KIPP?”
I have written a great deal about that successful network of public charter schools, known for raising the achievement of low-income students in our poorest urban and rural neighborhoods. I am hearing from some middle-class parents who would like some of that teaching for their own children. Here is Bellinger’s take on whether that will work. Her email address is cbelling@princeton.edu. Let her, and me, know what you think.
By Catharine Bellinger”>:
Madison School District: Private/Parochial, Open Enrollment Leave, Open Enrollment Enter, Home Based Parent Surveys
Kurt Kiefer, MMSD Chief Information Officer [1.3MB PDF]:
This memo is a summary of the results from the surveys completed during the past school year with various parent groups whose children reside within the MMSD attendance area but receive certain alternative education options. Also included are results of the survey conducted with non-residents who attend MMSD schools via the Open Enrollment program (Le., Open Enrollment Enter).
Background
Groups were surveys representing households whose students were enrolled in one of four different educational settings: MMSD resident students attending private/parochial schools, MMSD resident students attending other public schools via the Open Enrollment program, non-resident students attending MMSD schools via the Open Enrollment program, and MMSD resident students provided home based instruction.
The surveys were conducted between December 2008 and February 2009. The surveys were mailed to households or they could complete the survey online. Two mailings were conducted – the initial mailing to all households and a second to non-respondents as a reminder request. Total group sizes and responses are provided below.
This document will be discussed at Monday evening’s Madison School Board meeting.
UPDATE:
- Complete survey results can be found here [250K PDF]
- Madison School Board discussion of this survey (mp3 audio)
Everybody Hates The Teachers’ Unions Now
When Father Hesburgh throws down … How can we know when the tide of respectable opinion has decisively turned against the teachers’ unions? When a panel that includes Father Hesburgh, Birch Bayh. Bill Bradley, Eleanor Holmes Norton and Roger Wilkins goes medieval on them, saying their resistance to reforms designed to hold schools accountable has hurt “disadvantaged students” and led to “calcified systems in which talented people are deterred from applying or staying as teachers …”
Here are two undiplomatic grafs from the report’s final page:The unions have battled against the principle that schools and education agencies should be held accountable for the academic progress of their students. They have sought to water down the standards adopted by states to reflect what students should know and be able to do. They have attacked assessments designed to measure the progress of schools, seeking to localize decisions about test content so that the performance of students in one school or community cannot be compared with others. They have resisted innovative ways-such as growth models-to assess student performance.
In their attack on education reform, the national unions have often been unconstrained by considerations of propriety and fairness. They have sought to inject weakening amendments in appropriations bills, hoping that they would prevail if no hearings were held and the public was unaware of their efforts. They have used the courts to launch an attack on education reform, employing arguments that could imperil many federal assistance programs going back to the New Deal. They have failed to inform their own members of the content of federal reform laws.
Locally, it will be interesting to see what substantive changes, if any, come out of the current Madison School District / Madison Teachers, Inc. bargaining.
An Alternative Path to Teaching
The recent job market reminds me of when I finished my doctorate in the mid-1990s. Though the market was not as saturated then, it definitely was not conducive to finding a job. I applied to more than 100 colleges and universities, garnering only a phone interview at one college, where I happened to know two people on the search committee. I made it to a final cut of 10, but no further.
However, I knew that I wanted to teach, so I adjusted my plans and applied for positions at independent high schools (also known as “private schools,” but they do not care for that designation). For those struggling in this job market, I would suggest that this path has numerous benefits and few drawbacks, especially for someone beginning a career.
First, independent schools have talented, often highly motivated students. At the first school I worked at, I taught sophomores and juniors, not in Advanced Placement classes or even Honors classes. The sophomores read The Scarlet Letter, among other works, and the curriculum for the juniors included Beowulf, The Canterbury Tales, Hamlet, Macbeth, Jane Eyre, Tess of the D’Urbervilles, Heart of Darkness, and the British Romantic poets. Teachers assigned works such as Moby-Dick to their classes, and none of us were disappointed in the students’ responses to the level of difficulty. In fact, we had to move through Heart of Darkness quickly, as the end of the semester was approaching, and neither of my junior classes complained about the pace or load for what is a difficult read for the college sophomores I now teach in a non-majors course at a four-year, liberal arts university.
Related: via Janet Mertz.
Wisconsin requires teaching of organized labor in public schools
AP:
A state bill up for a hearing today would require Wisconsin public schools to teach the history of organized labor and the collective bargaining process in the U.S.
Labor unions support the requirement. But groups representing school boards and administrators have registered against it saying they don’t want the curriculum micromanaged
ouse members have endorsed teaching North Carolina public school students about how thousands of people were sterilized through a state program in the mid-20th century.
The House Education Committee approved legislation Tuesday that would order the eugenics program be included in the public school curriculum. The bill also direct students and professors at University of North Carolina campuses to interview program victims so future generations know what happened.
Indiana providing teaching fellowships in Science, Technology, Engineering & Mathematics (STEM)
The Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation:
The Woodrow Wilson Indiana Teaching Fellowship seeks to attract talented, committed individuals with backgrounds in the STEM fields–science, technology, engineering, and mathematics–into teaching in high-need Indiana high schools. Learn more…
Funded through a $10 million grant from the Lilly Endowment, the Fellowship offers rigorous disciplinary and pedagogical preparation, extensive clinical experience, and ongoing mentoring. Eligible applicants include current undergraduates, recent college graduates, midcareer professionals, and retirees who have majored in, or had careers in, STEM fields.
When will the MMSD and the State of WI follow suit?
Related:
- Action Needed, Please Sign on…. Math Teacher Hiring in the Madison School District
- An Email to Madison Superintendent Dan Nerad on Math Teacher Hiring Criteria
- Wisconsin bill to boost math and science teachers risky for students
Drivers of Choice: Parents, Transportation, and School Choice
Paul Teske, Jody Fitzpatrick, Tracey O’Brien, via a kind reader’s email:
Transportation is clearly a consideration to be factored into any discussion of school choice. Yet we know very little about how much it matters in family’s decisions about their children’s school, and almost nothing about how much of a barrier it is to school choice, especially for low-income families. How far does the average family want their child to travel to school? Would they be as comfortable letting their younger children travel as far as they might a middle or high school student? What transportation options are available to low-income families? These are the kinds of questions we tried to address in this study, in order to obtain meaningful data to help shape school transportation policy.
This project first surveyed the landscape of transportation and school choices. It examined the density of large districts in the U.S. The project team contacted large school districts to find out their policies on transportation and choice, then examined district budgets to see how much they actually spend on transportation. Most importantly, the project surveyed families in two cities—Denver and Washington, D.C.—to find out their travel patterns and school choice options. The study breaks down that data, collected from households earning less than $75,000 in annual income, to determine how much transportation is a barrier to choice.
This report addresses the following questions:
More Rigorous Requirements for Teacher Education Will Encourage Programs To Emphasize Clinical Training, Focus on Critical Needs of P-12 Schools
The National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education, via a kind reader’s email:
As part of the first major revision of teacher education requirements in 10 years, i nstitutions seeking the NCATE seal of approval must either demonstrate that they are on track to reach an “excellent” level of performance, rather than remain at an “acceptable level,” or make transformative changes in key areas, such as:
- strengthening the clinical focus of their programs to better prepare educators to meet the needs of today’s P-12 students and foster increases in student learning
- demonstrating the impact of their programs and graduates on P-12 student learning
- increasing knowledge about what works in teacher education to improve P-12 student learning, using a research and development strategy to build better knowledge and help institutions use that knowledge to improve programs, and
- addressing critical needs of schools, such as recruiting talented teachers and bolstering teacher retention.
The new accreditation strategy, approved by the NCATE Executive Board last month, creates two alternative pathways to accreditation. The Continuous Improvement track raises the target level of performance beyond the “acceptable” level. The second pathway, the Transformation Initiative track, encourages institutions to build the base of evidence in the field about what works in teacher preparation and help the P-12 schools they serve address major challenges, from raising student achievement to retaining teachers.
School Choice and Supreme Court Nominee Sonia Sotomayor
Will Judge Sonia Sotomayor’s life experience, including attending a private Catholic school, lead to an uncomfortable conclusion–that government-supported school choice is just?
The Obama administration has made Judge Sonia Sotomayor’s life story a central part of her introduction to the nation as a Supreme Court nominee. The administration has focused attention on her inspiring, only-in-America path from public housing through elite institutions of higher education to the top of the legal profession.
……
Consequently, we might expect to see these experiences clearly reflected in their positions on three contemporary issues.
First, President Obama ought to be a vigorous defender of the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program, which provides vouchers to low-income students in the nation’s capital so they can attend private schools.
Second, the president should be expected to act forcefully to save America’s urban Catholic and other faith-based schools, which are disappearing at a rapid pace, robbing disadvantaged families of desperately needed private education options.
Third, we should expect Judge Sotomayor to decide in favor of school choice programs while on the bench.
In practice, however, there appears to be a limit to the influence of personal experience. President Obama failed to stand up for the D.C. voucher program, and Democratic congressional leaders went after it with a vengeance. If his 2010 budget is adopted, no new students will be allowed into the program, and it will slowly wither away. Similarly, while his Department of Education has $100 billion in stimulus funding for America’s schools, neither he nor Education Secretary Arne Duncan has uttered a word about preserving faith-based urban schools.
Duncan’s Donut: The Ed. Sec.’s Impact on Chicago Student Achievement Was Near Zero
For seven months, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and the media have bombarded us with tales of how Duncan dramatically boosted student achievement as leader of Chicago Public Schools. Based on two new independent analyses, Duncan’s real impact appears to have been near zero.
The usual evidence presented for Duncan’s success is the rise in the pass rate of elementary and middle school students on Illinois’ own ISAT test. But state tests like the ISAT are notoriously unreliable (they tend to be corrupted by teaching to the test and subject to periodic “realignments” in which the passing grade is lowered or the test content is eased). In January, the Schools Matter blog argued that exactly such a realignment had occurred in 2006.
So to get a reliable measure of Duncan’s impact, I pulled up the 4th and 8th grade math and reading scores for Chicago on the National Assessment of Educational Progress — a test that is much less susceptible to massaging by states and districts. I then compared the score changes in Chicago to those for all students in Large Central Cities around the nation, and tested if the small differences between them were statistically significant. Not one of them is even remotely significant at even the loosest accepted measure of significance (the p < 0.1 level). Chicago students did no better than those in similar districts around the nation between 2002/2003 and 2007, a period covering virtually all of Duncan's tenure in Chicago.
University students not shy about asking profs to reconsider grades
Compiling final grades for students in Sharon Thoma’s Zoology 101 course is fairly simple.
Students take three multiple-choice exams, plus a final, during the semester. The grading scale is spelled out at the start of the year in the syllabus, which also notes there is no way to earn extra credit.
“So it’s solely objective and it’s pretty clear where you fall,” says Thoma, a University of Wisconsin-Madison faculty associate who co-teaches the huge lecture with two professors.
And yet, over the past two years Thoma has observed a surprising uptick in the number of students who e-mail her at the end of the semester, asking if she’d reconsider the grade she awarded them “because they worked so hard.”
Thoma estimates she received 20 such e-mails this spring out of some 850 students. “They’ll typically say, ‘I know you said there won’t be any grade adjustments, but I worked really hard and I don’t feel that the grade reflects the effort I put into the class,'” says Thoma, who stresses most students work hard in class and understand the ground rules. “And so I have a new standard reply: ‘I can’t quantitate your effort.'”
Not Making the Grade – English Curriculum on Hong Kong
As an international city, English has always been at the center of discussions regarding Hong Kong’s education system. Regretfully, the standard of English among students has fallen to such a level that it is worthy of attention.
Although I do not work in the field of education, I realize there may be many reasons for falling standards.
However, to my astonishment I heard recently of Hong Kong Institute of Education graduates majoring in English who merely got a D grade in English in the Hong Kong Certificate of Education Examination and Hong Kong Advanced Level yet got degrees to teach senior school students.
Learning the ropes: Program helps teens transition to high school
On Monday, it was all about maneuvering through a seemingly endless maze of high school hallways. By Tuesday, it was about soaring through the air on a zip line.
It was day two of LIFE, or Learning is for Everyone, a pilot program launched this summer for graduates of Whitehorse and Sennett middle schools. In the fall, the teens will enter La Follette High School as ninth-graders — both statistically and anecdotally one of the toughest periods of a student’s school career.
“Ninth grade can be a really rocky, challenging transition for many students,” said Julie Koenke, a grant communications coordinator for the Madison School District who helped write the curriculum for LIFE. “They’re not always sure of the change in expectations for them around academics. There’s a different school culture, and just the largeness of what a high school can be.”
LIFE — which offers students everything from scavenger hunts at La Follette to learn their way around the school to an athletic ropes course, classes on time management and visits to MATC and UW-Madison — is part of a trend: High schools are reaching out to freshmen to keep them in school even before the school year begins.
Newark Starts a Summer School Aimed at Advanced Placement
Advanced Placement classes do not begin at Science Park High School until September, but Cristiana De Oliveira will spend many a summer day sitting behind a desk in A.P. calculus for five hours rather than lounging by a swimming pool.
Cristiana is one of 335 students signed up for Newark’s new A.P. Summer Institute, in which A.P. courses in calculus, biology, United States history and English language and literature each get an intensive two-week introduction, paid for with $300,000 in federal grants.
Intended to help increase enrollment in the special courses as well as student performance, the new program, which starts on Monday, is expected to reach more than half the students taking Advanced Placement classes this fall in the 40,000-student Newark school district.
“We’re in a stressful environment in school, and if we can start now, it will be a lot easier,” said Cristiana, 17, a senior who will be getting up at 6:30 a.m. and riding two public buses to reach the high school for the summer program.
We Are All Writers Now
Blogs, Twitter, Facebook: these outlets are supposedly cheapening language and tarnishing our time. But the fact is we are all reading and writing much more than we used to, writes Anne Trubek …
The chattering classes have become silent, tapping their views on increasingly smaller devices. And tapping they are: the screeds are everywhere, decrying the decline of smart writing, intelligent thought and proper grammar. Critics bemoan blogging as the province of the amateurism. Journalists rue the loose ethics and shoddy fact-checking of citizen journalists. Many save their most profound scorn for the newest forms of social media. Facebook and Twitter are heaped with derision for being insipid, time-sucking, sad testaments to our literary degradation. This view is often summed up with a disdainful question: “Do we really care about what you ate for lunch?”
Forget that most of the pundits lambasting Facebook and Twitter are familiar with these devices because they use them regularly. Forget that no one is being manacled to computers and forced to read stupid prose (instead of, say, reading Proust in bed). What many professional writers are overlooking in these laments is that the rise of amateur writers means more people are writing and reading. We are commenting on blog posts, forwarding links and composing status updates. We are seeking out communities based on written words.
Tokyo subway manner posters
Let’s introduce interesting poster about train manner in Tokyo subway. You may see this interesting poster in Japanese Tokyo subway.
Progress in International Reading Literacy Study 2006 (PIRLS): pedagogical correlates of fourth-grade students in Hong Kong
Wai Ming Cheung, Shek Kam Tse, Joseph W.I. Lam and Elizabeth Ka Yee Loh:
Reading literacy of fourth-grade students in Hong Kong showed a remarkable improvement from 2001 to 2006 as shown by international PIRLS studies. This study identified various aspects of the teacher factor contributing to the significant improvement among students. A total of 4,712 students and 144 teachers from 144 schools were randomly selected using probability proportional-to-size technique to receive the Reading Assessment Test and complete the Teacher’s Questionnaire, respectively. A number of items pertaining to teachers’ instructional strategies and activities, opportunities for students to read various types of materials, practices on assessment, and professional preparation and perception, were found to be significantly correlated with the outcome of students’ reading literacy. Stepwise regression procedure revealed four significant predictors for students’ overall reading achievement. The most powerful predictor was the use of materials from other subjects as reading resources. Suggestions to improve quality of teaching of reading and further studies are made.
Houston Community College Has Global Appeal
America’s community colleges suffer from an image problem at home, but some are experiencing a boom — especially when it comes to foreign student enrollments.
Take Houston Community College. Thanks in part to an aggressive outreach campaign, the school has the highest percentage of international students of any community college in the U.S.
Betting On An American Education
Even if there were ivy on the walls of Houston Community College, it would wither in the Texas heat. The drab buildings of the school’s Gulfton neighborhood campus are typical community college architecture, but that doesn’t scare anyone away.
Sejal Desai came here after the college’s fame spread — via word of mouth — to the small city she comes from in India.
Schoolboy dream grows up
When asked why he thinks the UK is not as entrepreneurial as the US, Mr Smith puts the blame on education. “Teachers and career advisers have been very risk-averse,” he says.
“If you can change attitudes in schools and teach entrepreneurship to primary and secondary school children, we will have more role models.”
Dear Plagiarist
When you got your paper back with a grade of F for plagiarism, you reacted in predictable fashion — with indignant denial of any wrongdoing. You claimed “you cited everything” and denied that you had committed intentional plagiarism, or ever would.
This response is all too familiar to an experienced professor. Only once in my three decades of teaching has a student I caught plagiarizing owned up to it right away. And in that case, I believe (perhaps cynically) that she (a graduate student) thought a forthright confession might lead me to lighten the penalty. It didn’t; I failed her for the course and wrote her up. Indeed, I found out later that she had been caught plagiarizing by a colleague the previous term and let off lightly. I suspect that, because too many professors (many of them adjuncts fearful of student backlash) overlook or are unwilling to pursue plagiarism — the process can be labor intensive, and it is always unpleasant — cheating has become a way of life for many students, and they are genuinely surprised at being held responsible for it. So I don’t doubt that your shock is real.
How I Spent My Summer: Hacking Into iPhones With Friends
Like many teenagers, Ari Weinstein spends his summers riding his bike and swimming. This year, the 15-year-old had another item on his to-do list: Foil Apple Inc.’s brightest engineers and annoy chief executive Steve Jobs.
Ari is part of a loose-knit group of hackers that has made it a mission to “jailbreak” Apple’s iPhone and iPod touch. The term refers to installing unapproved software that lets people download a range of programs, including those not sanctioned by Apple.
Since Apple began selling its latest iPhone 3GS on June 19, Ari and six online cohorts spent hours a day probing the new product for security holes. This weekend, one of the member of the group, dubbed the Chronic Dev Team, released the jailbreaking software they’ve been working on. Ari says the program is a test version with some bugs, but that users have successfully downloaded it. A quarter-million people have visited the site, he says.
“Coding and testing things that may or may not work, and figuring things out, is a really rewarding experience,” says Ari, a Philadelphia resident who began hacking when he was 11.
Lessons for Failing Schools
Mr. Duncan has said from the start that he wants the states to transform about 5,000 of the lowest-performing schools, not in a piecemeal fashion but with bold policies that have an impact right away. The argument in favor of a tightly focused effort aimed at these schools is compelling. We now know, for example, that about 12 percent of the nation’s high schools account for half the country’s dropouts generally — and almost three-quarters of minority dropouts. A plan that fixed these schools, raising high school graduation and college-going rates, would pay enormous dividends for the country as a whole.
Mr. Duncan can use his burgeoning discretionary budget to reward states that take the initiative in this area. But Congress could push the reform effort further and faster by granting the education department’s request for two changes in federal education law. The first would be to come up with new federal school improvement money and require the states to focus 40 percent of it on the lowest-performing middle and high schools. The second change would allow the secretary to directly finance charter-school operators that have already produced high-quality schools.
6 Great Tools for LSAT, SAT and GMAT Test Prep
Thousands of intelligent students seize up during standardized test season. They’re the ones in the back of the gymnasium, frantically writing to the last minute and choking under the pressure of an egg timer. I am this student.
Perhaps test anxiety doesn’t come from the actual questions sitting in front of us, but rather the fact that these standardized test scores can be life altering. These scores affect our admittance to the right schools, our ability to gain scholarships and our ability to qualify for certain types of aid. The weight of these tests had many of us prematurely self-destructing, and honestly, it doesn’t get any easier as we get older.
Want to do an MBA or law degree? Your qualifying test scores could mean the difference between a great life transition and a mediocre one. Below is a list of test prep resources. If you’re spending your summer prepping, these might just help you gain the confidence you need to come out on top.
Q & A With US Education Secretary Arne Duncan
ucation Secretary Arne Duncan recently answered questions about his goals and relationship with the business community. An edited transcript:
QWhy include business in the policy debate about public education?
AWe all need to work together on this stuff, business leaders and educators. Everyone’s mutual interests are absolutely aligned.
QBusiness leaders want reform but don’t want to pay for it, right?
ANo; there’s been unbelievable generosity, not just in resources but in ideas. We’ve had a great relationship with the Chamber of Commerce and Business Roundtable. I’ve met with a number of CEOs.
Bout with cancer gave Evers the drive to become Wisconsin schools chief
When the surgery was over, the worst of the aftermath survived, and the tumor gone, Tony Evers met with his oncologist, Linn Khuu.
“You know, you’ve been given a second chance,” she told him. “Go do something great.”
Evers felt a bit insulted at first. He thought he had worked hard and done good things for years. For one thing, he had been deputy state superintendent of public instruction for almost seven years at that point.
Then he decided she was right.
Now, Evers said, he would tell people who went through what he went through, “If you do get a second chance, make the most of it.”
At 11 a.m. Monday, Evers, 57, will show what he is doing to make the most of it. He will be sworn in as Wisconsin’s 26th superintendent of public instruction – and almost surely the first without an esophagus.
Within months of being told he had a form of cancer that generally has low survival rates, Evers decided to undertake a race for statewide office.
“Once you get over a hurdle, it does make you a bit more fearless,” he said in an interview last week.
A Union Promotion
An enemy of education reform gets kicked upstairs.
Wall Street Journal Editorial:
In her weekly “What Matters Most” newspaper column, Randi Weingarten recently bid the Big Apple farewell. Ms. Weingarten has been elevated to president of the national American Federation of Teachers from head of its New York City affiliate, and she had some notable parting words: “One of the most rewarding (and exhausting) things about working in public education in New York City is that it is the best laboratory in the world for trying new things.”
Well, it could be, if it weren’t for Ms. Weingarten’s union. Since taking over in 1998, she has done everything she could to block significant reforms to New York’s public schools. Take her opposition to charter schools. She resisted raising the state cap on charters from 100 unless the union could organize them. (She lost and the cap now is 200.)
Wisconsin’s New K-12 Academic Standards
Wisconsin education officials are aiming to move into the national mainstream by setting firmer standards for what children should learn in school and finding better ways to measure achievement.
A new report from the American Diploma Project praises Wisconsin’s proposed new set of standards for high school English and math. The report is the latest of several indications that changes are being made when it comes to student expectations – and that others are noticing.
Wisconsin built a reputation in recent years for having loosely written state standards. The state was viewed as setting the bar about as low as anywhere in the country in determining if students were proficient, and taking too rosy an approach to deciding whether schools were getting adequate results.
Several national groups, some of them with conservative orientations but others harder to peg politically, criticized the state for its softness.
The report from the Diploma Project, issued last week, says that in revising its statement of what students are expected to learn in English and math, “Wisconsin has taken an important step to better prepare young people for success in post-secondary education and in their careers.”
Much more on the WKCE here.
Peer Pressure
Will Fitzhugh
The Concord Review
6 July 2009
We make frequent use of the influence of their high school peers on many of our students. We have peer counseling programs and even peer discipline systems, in some cases. We show students the artistic abilities of their peers in exhibitions, concerts, plays, recitals, and the like.
Most obviously, we put before our high school students the athletic skills and performances of their peers in a very wide range of meets, matches, and games, some of which, of course, are better attended than others.
While some high schools still have just one valedictorian, fellow students have little or no idea what sort of academic work the student who is first in her class has done. Academic scholarships may be announced, but it is quite impossible for peers to see the academic work for which the scholarship has been awarded. Here again, the contrast with athletics is clear.
We show high school students the artistic, athletic, and other examples of the outstanding efforts and accomplishments of their peers without seeming to worry that such examples will send their peers into unmanageable depressions or cause them to give up their own efforts to do their best.
When it comes to academic achievements, on the other hand, we do seem to worry that they will have a harmful effect if they are shown to other students. I am not quite sure how that attitude got its hold on us, but I do have some comments from authors whose papers I have published, on their reaction to seeing the exemplary academic work of their peers:
“When a former history teacher first lent me a copy of The Concord Review, I was inspired by the careful scholarship crafted by other young people. Although I have always loved history passionately, I was used to writing history papers that were essentially glorified book reports…As I began to research the Ladies’ Land League, I looked to The Concord Review for guidance on how to approach my task…In short, I would like to thank you not only for publishing my essay, but for motivating me to develop a deeper understanding of history. I hope that The Concord Review will continue to fascinate, challenge and inspire young historians for years to come.”
North Central High School (IN) Class of 2005
“The opportunity that The Concord Review presented drove me to rewrite and revise my paper to emulate its high standards. Your journal truly provides an extraordinary opportunity and positive motivation for high school students to undertake extensive research and academic writing, experiences that ease the transition from high school to college.”
Thomas Worthington High School (OH) Class of 2008
“Thank you for selecting my essay regarding Augustus Caesar and his rule of the Roman Republic for publication in the Spring 2009 issue of The Concord Review. I am both delighted and honored to know that this essay will be of some use to readers around the world. The process of researching and writing this paper for my IB Diploma was truly enjoyable and it is my hope that it will inspire other students to undertake their own research projects on historical topics.”
Old Scona Academic High School, Edmonton, Alberta, (Canada) Class of 2008
“In the end, working on that history paper, inspired by the high standard set by The Concord Review, reinvigorated my interest not only in history, but also in writing, reading and the rest of the humanities. I am now more confident in my writing ability, and I do not shy from difficult academic challenges. My academic and intellectual life was truly altered by my experience with that paper, and the Review played no small role! Without the Review, I would not have put so much work into the paper. I would not have had the heart to revise so thoroughly.”
Isidore Newman School (LA) Class of 2003
“At CRLHS, a much-beloved history teacher suggested to me that I consider writing for The Concord Review, a publication that I had previously heard of, but knew little about. He proposed, and I agreed, that it would be an opportunity for me to pursue more independent work, something that I longed for, and hone my writing and research skills in a project of considerably broader scope than anything I had undertaken up to that point.”
Cambridge Rindge and Latin High School (MA) Class of 2003
Now, whenever a counterintuitive result–like this enthusiasm for a challenge–is found, there is always an attempt to limit the damage to our preconceptions. “This is only a tiny fringe group (of trouble-makers, nerds, etc.)” or “most of our high school students would not respond with interest to the exemplary academic work of their peers.” The problem with those arguments is that we really don’t know enough. We haven’t actually tried to see what would happen if we presented our high school students with good academic work done by their more diligent peers. Perhaps we should consider giving that experiment a serious try. I have, as it happens, some good high school academic work to use as examples in such a trial…
Education Letters on Classroom Structure, Among Others
Context and analysis is key part of schooling
While I entirely agree with David Elmore that the structure of many classrooms can work against the normal ways that young students learn, I must protest the picture of learning which he proposes.
ADD is a real disease. Anyone who “mostly got A’s and B’s” in school was not ADD. Elmore should spend some time in a class with real ADD students –he will soon see the qualitative difference between their distractibility and the usual kind. Lack of structure is hard for them.
Learning to add numbers or read words is not the same as learning mathematics or reading a sophisticated text: Both require understanding underlying ideas and comparing and contrasting them with other ideas.
Talking to a parent about how invasive taxes are also will not prepare someone for adult conversation. While most of the time people don’t know theories, they use them. The first time someone proposes a Hamiltonian view of freedom while yours is Jeffersonian, if you don’t know theory, you will not be able to respond convincingly, and you will soon feel pretty stupid.
An exciting school, at any level, gives students not only skills like addition and reading, not only facts without context, but the joy of deep understanding and analysis, which requires teachers and a structure leading students to it.
Sally MacEwen, associate professor and chair of classics at Agnes Scott College
What it’s Like to Teach Black Students
Despite almost 50 years of large and accelerating efforts to improve the school achievement of African-American students, the gap between their achievement and that of whites and Asians remains about as large as ever.
Yet proposals for what to do about it seem basically unchanged: Spend more money and divert existing money to reduce class size and train teachers better, have more students take a rigorous college prep curriculum, work on improving self-esteem, eliminate ability-grouped classes, use cooperative-learning techniques, and reassign top teachers to schools with a high percentage of African-American students.
I have become especially doubtful about whether those approaches will work better in the future than they have in the past when I read this report from the trenches. Usually, we hear only from politicians and education leaders (who also are politicians) spouting lofty rhetoric. Occasionally, we hear of a promising program, but which never turns out to be scalable. Or we see a Hollywood movie about some amazing teacher.
We rarely, however, hear from a more typical teacher who, day to day, teaches low-achieving African-American kids. So it was with interest that I read this truly depressing account from a teacher. I’ve edited out a couple of unnecessarily snarky sentences, which are irrelevant to the issue. Nonetheless the essay is long yet, I believe, worth your time.)
Like Her Subject, Math Teacher’s Dedication and Conviction Were Absolute
Doris Broome DeBoe, who became one of the District’s leading math teachers, said she was drawn to the subject because it was absolute. Where other subjects were subjective, she said, math was exact.
“Once you understand what you are doing, there is no deviation,” she said.
As a teacher, she believed in endless math drills, nightly homework and practice. She described herself not as a harsh instructor but as one who thought algebra is “a skill like ball playing and piano playing. Once you learn the basics, practice is necessary to ensure mastery.”
She said every child had the potential to do well in class. “My best dog is the underdog,” she told her students.
Her conviction motivated many students. Michael Bell, a student at Bertie Backus Middle School in the mid-1970s, said Mrs. DeBoe was the inspiration for creating his math preparation company, Acaletics, which helps develop curriculums and training programs within the Florida public school system. His company follows the same basic formula as Mrs. DeBoe’s teaching: Practice makes perfect.
Md. School Joins Test of Online Courses Tailored to Girls
When the Online School for Girls flickers to life this fall on computer screens across the country, students will take part in an unusual experiment that joins two trends: girls-only schooling and online teaching.
A consortium that includes the 108-year-old Holton-Arms School in Bethesda is driving the project, in the belief that girls can benefit from an Internet curriculum tailored just to them.
“There’s been a lot of research done on how girls learn differently with technology than boys,” said Brad Rathgeber, Holton-Arms’s director of technology. “Part of this is a little bit of theory that we’re trying to put in practice to see if it really does play out.”
For now, the online collaboration will allow the four participating schools — Holton-Arms, Harpeth Hall in Nashville, Westover School in Middlebury, Conn., and Laurel School in Shaker Heights, Ohio — to offer classes that would not have generated enough student interest or teacher support in any one school. When the classes open to the public a year later, the educators hope that students around the world — including homeschoolers and girls at coed schools — will be able to take part in a version of the girls’ school experience. And they want to prove that single-sex online education works. They can’t find anyone who has done anything similar.
Learning-community dorm: Cool or not cool?
There are dorms that are popular on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus: Elizabeth Waters, the scenic hall in the center of campus, or the new Ogg, which has air conditioning and walk-in closets.
And then, for whatever reason, there are the ones that aren’t. Whether it be Witte, Cole, Kronshage, or another, officials say they’re never sure which dorms will drop to the bottom of the list on any given year, falling victim to the whims of 17- and 18-year-olds.
In particular, the university has had some trouble enticing students to live in dorms they label as learning communities, or those that bring faculty, staff, and unique seminars into dorm life.
There are two full dorms on campus with this mission — Chadbourne and Bradley — plus floors with special interest themes like women in science and engineering, entrepreneurship, international interests and more.
Last year, UW-Madison started a program that rewards students for picking these halls by allowing them to choose their room online, a la seat selection with the airlines. The fate of other students are left to a computer program’s random picks.
A Hot Beach Debate for Edu-Nerds Like Me
Those of us who spend our days mesmerized by discussions of summer learning loss, looping and longitudinal analysis need a summer break, just like everybody else. We are readers, so on vacation we are likely to have a book in our hands, or if we are very old, a newspaper. For me, bestselling thrillers are too predictable and mysteries too complex. I need something different, something weird, something fresh that taps into my essential nerdiness, and I have found it. “Education Hell: Rhetoric vs. Reality,” by Gerald W. Bracey.
The first few chapters are familiar, if you, like me, are a fan of the irascible Bracey and his assaults on the conventionally wise among our education leaders. But in chapter 10 he does something totally unexpected. He resurrects The Eight-Year Study, a 70-year-old corpse, and makes me want to talk about it, even with that guy sprawled out on the next beach towel.
The Eight-Year Study was published in 1942, three years before I was born. That is, to me, a virtue. So few people have heard of it they cannot have any knee-jerk reactions. It was a very large experiment. More than 30 high schools in the 1930s were encouraged to try non-traditional approaches to teaching, like combining Engish and social studies and science into one course, to see how the students who studied that way did when compared to students who did not attend the schools in the study. More than 300 colleges agreed to abandon their traditional admissions procedures in accepting students from the experimental schools.
Throwing a Lifeline to Struggling Teachers
Jean Bernstein rang a cowbell, her cue to quiet the sixth-graders at Roberto Clemente Middle School for a lesson on multiplying decimals. “You need to settle down,” she said.
But that afternoon in Germantown, students seemed intent on chatting, clapping and exchanging high-fives. As the teacher led the class through a sheet of problems, one boy punctuated every answer by exclaiming, “I agree!”
The students might have cut Bernstein some slack had they known that she, too, was being graded.
Last fall, Bernstein entered Peer Assistance and Review, a Montgomery County program that identifies struggling teachers and tries to help them improve. Those who do not face dismissal.
US Education Secretary Duncan Promotes Charter School Debate
chools specialize in math, science or the arts. Some are Afro-centric, others are religious. They are publicly funded but operate independently of local schools boards and, often, teacher unions.
They all make up the growing charter school movement that the Obama administration would like to see flourish.
“The charter movement is absolutely one of the most profound changes in American education, bringing new options to underserved communities and introducing competition and innovation into the education system,” Education Secretary Arne Duncan told attendees at the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools’ annual conference last week.
Shake-up in Seattle schools coming soon
Danny Westneat via a kind reader’s email:
Maybe it was brought on by lean times. Or maybe long-simmering angst about the state of Seattle schools is finally boiling over on its own.
But the decision this month to lay off 165 of Seattle schools’ newest teachers in a “last hired, first fired” manner has got some of liberal Seattle suddenly sounding more like a conservative red state.
More than 600 school parents have signed an online petition, at supportgreatteachers.com, that calls out the teachers union for causing “great distress and upheaval” in the schools. At issue is the policy of choosing who gets laid off solely by seniority.
“Wake up and see how union refusal to consider merit is damaging the profession and our kids,” wrote one parent.
“We want the best teachers, not the oldest, teaching our kids,” wrote another.
“Teacher unions are an anachronism,” said another.
The organizers of the petition are a group of parents called Community and Parents for Public Schools. They agree what they’re doing is very un-Seattle.
A parent’s plea on teaching
Michael Laser, via a kind reader’s email:
IF I could change public education, here’s what I’d do first: reward the best teachers with higher pay and stature, and fire the worst teachers, because they shouldn’t be in the classroom.
My children have gone through a total of 16 years of public schooling in New Jersey. Over the years, I’ve seen outstanding teachers, and outstandingly bad ones. Our kids have had teachers who introduced them to everything under the sun, and made every day different and fascinating. Some of our daughter’s teachers gave up their lunch and stayed late to help her find her way through the maze of math. Two of our son’s teachers comforted him when traumatic events laid him low. My daughter’s sixth-grade teacher made students feel like real scientists; her language arts teacher covered everyone’s papers with useful suggestions. These people put everything they have into teaching. They light sparks that stay lit for years.
But we’ve also seen teachers who put dents in our children’s spirits, day after day, teachers who barely taught anything at all, who, I suspect, chose the profession because they wanted summers off.
My father used to come home from his post office job railing about co-workers who didn’t do their share of the work, but couldn’t be fired. Watching bad teachers fail to do their jobs, I’m even angrier than he was. How can anyone justify protecting the jobs of teachers who:
Seniority vs. Effectiveness
Seattle: Support Great Teachers:
As a Seattle community, we can and must speak up to improve the effectiveness of every school, in every neighborhood.
We, the undersigned, ask our leaders to do the following:
1. Delay the immediate assignment of replacement teachers until the effects of attrition and retirement are understood. Keep successful teams intact.
2. In the new contract between the teachers’ association and the school district, change the layoff policy to prioritize effectiveness. Put in place a system that promotes, rewards and protects teamwork, expertise, best teaching practices and each site’s unique programmatic needs.
3. Ensure that all kids have consistent access to highly effective teachers.
4. Give our principals the tools they need to support and retain effective teachers within their individual schools.
Korean School Preps Students For Ivy League
With admissions getting more competitive every year, spots at top American colleges are becoming a globally coveted commodity. In Seoul, one elite South Korean prep school has become the envy of many upper-crust U.S. prep schools with its success at getting its students into Ivy League colleges.
The Korean school’s formula is simple: Select the country’s brightest and most ambitious students and work them extremely hard.
U.S.-Style Studying 101
Roughly 1,200 students at the private Daewon Foreign Language High School begin their day with a nationally required curriculum of Korean, math and English. Three afternoons a week, about a quarter of them continue their studies in the Global Leadership Program — a special course that emphasizes the research, writing and analytical skills they will need at top U.S. colleges.
A Bank Run Teaches the ‘Plain People’ About the Risks of Modernity
Dan Bontrager is a 54-year-old Amish man with flecks of gray in his long beard. He’s also treasurer of the Tri-County Land Trust, an Amish lending cooperative created to support the Amish maxim that community enhances faith in God.
This past spring, Mr. Bontrager was startled when a number of men he has known most of his life tied their horses to the hitching post outside his office and came inside to withdraw their money from the Land Trust.
“We had a run,” Mr. Bontrager says. “I don’t know if you know anything about the Amish grapevine, but word travels fast. Somebody assumed it was going to happen, and it started a panic.”
Barb Thompson takes Montgomery (AL) Superintendent Post
Adrienne Nettles via a kind reader’s email:
In a vote preceded by outbursts from board members, the Montgomery County Board of Education on Wednesday selected Barbara Thompson as Montgomery’s new superintendent.
The board voted 4-3 along racial lines to offer the job to Thompson, who currently serves as superintendent of New Glarus Public Schools in Wisconsin.
Black board members Mary Briers, Eleanor Dawkins, Robert Porterfield and Beverly Ross voted for Thompson. Voting against her were white members Charlotte Meadows, Heather Sellers and Melissa Snowden, who all wanted to continue the search process.
Thompson was the lone finalist for the job after Samantha Ingram, superintendent of Fairfield County Schools in South Carolina, withdrew on Monday.
Ross, chairwoman of the school board, said she called Thompson shortly after the vote and Thompson accepted the job.
“I am excited that she’s excited about coming here,” Ross said. “She was already talking about how to get our test scores up.”
Thompson, in a phone interview from her house in Wisconsin, said she and the board in the next few days should begin working out the details of her contract, which include salary negotiations.
Thompson was formerly principal at Lapham Elementary in the Madison School District. The Montgromery School District, with 31,000 students, is nearly 1/3 larger than the Madison Schools.
Education in America and Britain: Learning Lessons from Private Schools
The right and wrong ways to get more poor youngsters into the world’s great universities
LOTS of rich people and crummy state schools, especially in the big cities where well-off folk tend to live: these common features of America and Britain help explain the prominence in both countries of an elite tier of private schools. Mostly old, some with fat endowments, places like Eton, Harrow and Phillips Exeter have done extraordinarily well. Fees at independent schools have doubled in real terms over the past 25 years and waiting lists have lengthened. Even in the recession, they are proving surprisingly resilient (see article). A few parents are pulling out, but most are soldiering on and plenty more are clamouring to get their children in.
Row, row together
All sorts of class-based conspiracy theories exist to explain the success of such institutions, but the main reason why they thrive in a more meritocratic world is something much more pragmatic: their ability to get people into elite universities. For Britain and America also have the world’s best universities. Look at any of the global rankings and not only do the Ivy League and Oxbridge monopolise the top of the tree, British and (especially) American colleges dominate most of the leading 100 places. This summer graduates will struggle to find jobs, so a degree from a world-famous name like Berkeley or the London School of Economics will be even more valuable than usual. The main asset of the private schools is their reputation for getting children into those good universities.
Private Schools & The Recession
In both America and Britain recession has so far done little to dent the demand for private education.
“COMPARED with last year, applications are up 14%,” says Mark Stanek, the principal of Ethical Culture Fieldston, a private school in New York. All through the application season he and his board of governors had been on tenterhooks, waiting to see if financial turmoil would cut the number of parents prepared to pay $32,000-34,000 a year to educate a child. Requests for financial help from families already at Fieldston had been rising fast, and the school had scraped together $3m–on top of the $8m it spends on financial aid in a normal year–in the hope of tiding as many over as possible. Nothing is certain until pupils turn up in the autumn. Some parents could get cold feet and sacrifice their deposits. Yet so far the school is more popular than ever.
Across America the picture is patchier, but there is little sign of a recession-induced meltdown in private schooling. Catholic parochial schools and some in rural areas are finding the going harder–but this is merely the acceleration of existing trends. Private schools in big cities with rich residents, and those with famous names and a history of sending graduates to the Ivy League, seem to be doing rather well. “Some parents weighing up their options may be worried about what recession will do to public-school budgets,” says Myra McGovern of the National Association of Independent Schools (NAIS), which represents around 1,400 of the country’s 30,000-odd private schools. “And some may think that if other people are struggling, that will mean their children are more likely to get in.”
Massachusetts Teachers Union Votes Down Advanced Placement Grant
Today’s lesson comes courtesy of Bernadette Marso, president of the Leominster Education Association in Massachusetts. Her members just voted down, by a 305-47 margin, a five-year, $856,000 grant from the Advanced Placement Training and Award Program. The program, among other things, pays teachers of Advanced Placement courses bonus money “if they successfully recruit more students to take AP courses and if the students perform well on the end-of-the-year AP exam.”
Some district officials and parents complained about the union decision because the bonuses were just one part of the program, which includes professional development and a subsidy to offset the AP exam fee for the students. But the union stood firmly opposed.
“We understand that some people will not understand the vote, but we confronted this from a union perspective,” Marso said. “We have a fair and equitable contract with the district, and to have a third party come in and start paying certain teachers more money than other hard-working teachers goes against what a union is all about.”
It will be interesting to see how the Madison School District’s contract negotiations play out with respect to community 4K partners and other curriculuar issues.
Tony Evers Evokes Change as He Enters Wisconsin DPI Superintendent Office
“Education is all about continued improvement, and the status quo is not satisfactory,” Evers told the audience at a WisPolitics.com luncheon Tuesday at the Madison Club.
In addition to guiding local schools as they navigate state cuts and an influx of federal stimulus funding, Evers is promoting a single federal test and an overhaul of accountability and assessment standards for public education. Under the new system, which Evers said would be formed quickly over the next few months, the state will be able to consistently measure other educational categories aside from test scores.
The test score measurement mandates under the federal No Child Left Behind law drew criticism from Evers for their incomplete picture of education, but he said the federal standard has done educators “a tremendous favor” by showing disparities between performance of white and non-white students.
He also called for a national standard of testing and curriculum, which he said 46 states had backed. He said that Wisconsin isn’t able to truly compare its educational growth to other districts and states because 50 different tests are being administered annually. He also called the current system “economically irrational.”
“Public education, even though it’s a state responsibility, is a national endeavor, and we have to view it as such,” Evers said. “By doing this, we’re going to make our system more transparent.”
Perhaps nothing will test the new state accountability system as much as Milwaukee. Evers went to great lengths to discuss the “magic” that teachers work with many less fortunate students in the state’s largest school district, but recognized a graduation rate that, despite increasing to about 70 percent, lags well behind the state average.
Making the Right Choice: Which School is Best?
Choosing a school for one’s child must be one of life’s toughest decisions. The consequences can last a lifetime – for one’s offspring – and have enormous effects upon their wealth and happiness.
The data on which to base a decision are incomplete – even academic league tables such as our own are only a partial measure of a school’s “success” in preparing pupils for adult life – and money, or the lack of it, may limit the range of options.
But if money were no object, would it be better to send your child to an independent, or a state school?
On the face of it, evidence in favour of independent schools looks strong. Independent schools educate only 7 per cent of children in the UK, yet they dominate our rankings. Parents who have the financial resources also vote with their pockets.
According to studies by MTM Consulting, a specialist adviser to independent schools, almost a quarter of families who can afford the fees send one or more children to independent schools.
They are therefore spending a lot of cash to buy a private-sector service in preference to one that, in theory, is available free from the state. These parents clearly believe they are buying some added value.
Madison’s Population Grew 22,491 from 2000 to 2008, School Enrollment Flat
Madison continued its remarkable population surge with a 10.7% increase from 2000 to 2008, top among Wisconsin cities with a population of 50,000 or more. The capital also led Wisconsin in numerical growth, adding 22,491 people, for a total population of 231,916.
“Madison remains a very desirable place to live, and positive growth rates like this reflect that high quality of life,” Madison Mayor Dave Cieslewicz said in a statement.
The new estimates are intriguing, both locally and nationally, because they detail America’s population at the cusp of the financial meltdown and in the midst of a housing bust. They’re also the last estimates to be released before the 2010 census is taken.
“Big cities are resilient,” said William H. Frey, a demographer with the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. “They’ve been able to survive in a very difficult economy. These cities have diverse economies that can hold their own in these troubled times.”
Related:
- Where have all the students gone?
- increased outbound open enrollment applications from the Madison School District
- A bit of historic enrollment and staffing data.
- Credit for Non-MMSD Classes
Madison’s enrollment was 24,758 during the 1999-2000 school year and 24,189 during the 2008-2009 academic year. More here and here.
Given Madison’s academic orientation (UW-Madison, MATC, Edgewood College, not to mention a number of nearby institutions), our students (every one of them) should have access to world class academics.
$10 million for new science books as state adds exam
Teaching science in a school district that for years paid little attention to it will cost $10 million for textbooks alone over the next six years.
The city school board approved the expense Monday night, and also OK’d $2.1 million for more print and Web-based reading materials for students in pre-K through third grade.
Half of the district’s students are held back at least one year by the time they are in third grade because they cannot read well enough.
The effects, district officials say, show up in low graduation rates and high dropout and incarceration rates, costing the city millions a year in lost productivity alone and millions more in prison and jail costs.
Since the federal No Child Left Behind mandate was passed in 2002, science has gotten short shrift here because it is not one of the subjects covered under the state exams. Instead, teachers have focused on math and reading, often doubling up class periods to give students a bigger dose of what they must know to pass.
Khosla: How To Succeed In Silicon Valley By Bumbling And Failing…
Vinod Khosla is one of Silicon Valley’s most successful VCs. I was at the recent SDForum Visionary Awards where Mr Khosla was one of four winners of the 2009 awards.
His acceptance speech was short and very good. Excellent advice for entrepreneurs.
Also, he talks about failure, which I have long advocated is Silicon Valley’s strength.
A couple of years ago I met with a delegation of Russian diplomats, VCs, and government officials. They were visiting Silicon Valley and wanted to meet with me as part of their tour. They were looking for ways to create several silicon valley-like regions in Russia.
During our meeting, I told them I would tell them the secret of Silicon Valley. I paused. They all leaned in a little closer…
38,000 Hong Kong Students Receive A-level results
Over 38,000 Hong Kong students received their A-level results on Tuesday morning – in one of the most eagerly anticipated but stressful days for young people in the territory.
The Examination Authority said this year there were 38,647 students sitting the A-level exams.
Of these, 8,859 were private candidates and 9,711 were repeating the exams. While most are secondary school pupils, some are also mature students. The exams allow people to enter university.
A total of 17,744 students obtained minimum qualifications for university – a rise of 174 over last year, the authority said.
But it said there were only 14,500 government-funded undergraduate places available at universities. This means 3,244 students will have to attend other tertiary institutions.
The Library of Congress on iTunes U
• Historical videos from the Library’s moving-image collections such as original Edison films and a series of 1904 films from the Westinghouse Works;
- Original videos such as author presentations from the National Book Festival, the “Books and Beyond” series, lectures from the Kluge Center, and the “Journeys and Crossings” series of discussions with curators;
- Audio podcasts, including series such as “Music and the Brain,” slave narratives from the American Folklife Center, and interviews with noted authors from the National Book Festival; and
- Classroom and educational materials, including 14 courses from the Catalogers’ Learning Workshop
Slick. Download iTunes here. MIT’s open courseware, among many others is also available on iTunes U.
HOW DOES OUR LANGUAGE SHAPE THE WAY WE THINK?
For a long time, the idea that language might shape thought was considered at best untestable and more often simply wrong. Research in my labs at Stanford University and at MIT has helped reopen this question. We have collected data around the world: from China, Greece, Chile, Indonesia, Russia, and Aboriginal Australia. What we have learned is that people who speak different languages do indeed think differently and that even flukes of grammar can profoundly affect how we see the world. Language is a uniquely human gift, central to our experience of being human. Appreciating its role in constructing our mental lives brings us one step closer to understanding the very nature of humanity.
The Evidence on Online Education
Online learning has definite advantages over face-to-face instruction when it comes to teaching and learning, according to a new meta-analysis released Friday by the U.S. Department of Education.
The study found that students who took all or part of their instruction online performed better, on average, than those taking the same course through face-to-face instruction. Further, those who took “blended” courses — those that combine elements of online learning and face-to-face instruction — appeared to do best of all. That finding could be significant as many colleges report that blended instruction is among the fastest-growing types of enrollment.
The Education Department examined all kinds of instruction, and found that the number of valid analyses of elementary and secondary education was too small to have much confidence in the results. But the positive results appeared consistent (and statistically significant) for all types of higher education, undergraduate and graduate, across a range of disciplines, the study said.
A meta-analysis is one that takes all of the existing studies and looks at them for patterns and conclusions that can be drawn from the accumulation of evidence.
The exit exam debate
The proposal to scrap the exam has been called “controversial” because it has divided education leaders from their usual allies in the Legislature.
While Assembly Speaker Karen Bass and Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg say it’s not fair to ask our students to risk giving up their diplomas as a result of state budget cuts, many education leaders fear dismantling a centerpiece of California’s educational accountability system that was finally implemented just three years ago after years of delay.
But the debate over the exam, a budget line item that represents less than one-third of 0.001 of a percent of the budget shortfall, distracts from the more important “test” by which the state budget should be judged: the effect it will have on our children and on California’s future. By just about any measure, the budget on the table in Sacramento now receives a failing grade.
The Bard of Berkeley A former poet laureate on haiku and the responsibilities of writers.
One benefit of being a poet — as opposed to, say, a politician or talk-show host — is that you can be the most celebrated person in your field, a virtual rock star among those who study, read and write poetry, and still remain anonymous in just about any public setting.
The thought occurs to me as I stand outside one of this city’s finer Japanese-fusion restaurants (a fancy joint called Yoshi’s) chain smoking and awaiting the arrival of Robert Hass, a poetry rock star if ever there was one.
Last year alone the 68-year-old Berkeley professor won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award for his collection of poems “Time and Materials.” From 1995-97 he was America’s poet laureate, and he used the post in innovative ways to promote literacy. From 1997-2000 he wrote the popular “Poet’s Choice” column for the Washington Post, introducing readers to his favorite poets each week. His translations of Japanese haiku and the works of Czeslaw Milosz — the late, great Polish poet, winner of the 1980 Nobel Prize in Literature — are read the world over.
How Should We Teach English-Language Learners?
Last week, the Supreme Court ruled that the state of Arizona has not violated federal laws that require schools to help students who do not speak, read or write English. Despite the federal mandates, these kids often fail to do well in school. So why haven’t schools figured out the best way to teach English to non-English-speaking students?
“The research certainly has in the past shown dual language programs to be the most effective,” says Nancy Rowe.
Rowe oversees instruction for English-language learners in Nebraska. She swears that building on a child’s native language, rather than discarding it, has proven to be the best way to help kids make the transition to English — but that’s neither here nor there, because the actual programs that schools use have less to do with research than with politics and funding.
Is Wisconsin state-of-the-art for K-12 science and math education?
The Public Policy Forum’s latest report, released today, finds that of the 10 career clusters predicted to grow the most over the next five years, seven include occupations requiring strong backgrounds in science, math, technology, or engineering (STEM). Of the 10 specific jobs predicted to be the fastest growing in the state, eight require STEM skills or knowledge and six require a post-secondary degree.
Do Wisconsin’s state educational policies reflect this growing need for STEM-savvy and skilled workers? Are Wisconsin education officials focusing on STEM in a coherent and coordinated way? Our new report probes those issues by examining state workforce development data and reviewing state-level policies and standards that impact STEM education.
We present several policy options that could be considered to build on localized STEM initiatives and establish a greater statewide imperative to prioritize STEM activities in coordination with workforce needs. Those include:
A Formula for Changing Math Education
Someone always asks the math teacher, “Am I going to use calculus in real life?” And for most of us, says Arthur Benjamin, the answer is no. He offers a bold proposal on how to make math education relevant in the digital age.
Critical Likability
Will Fitzhugh
The Concord Review
28 June 2009
As we approach the end of the first decade of the first century of the third millennium of the Christian Era, the corporate members of the new and influential Partnership for 21st Century Skills have begun to look beyond and behind and beneath their earlier commitment to the education of our students in critical thinking, collaborative problem solving, and global awareness.
It has become obvious to industry leaders that more fundamental than all these new student skills for success in the business world is really Critical Likability. While it may be useful for new employees to know that the world is round, and that solving problems is sometimes easier if others provide help, and that real thinking is superior to not thinking at all, these all pale in importance to whether other people like you or not.
Being a great communicator is important, and reading and writing have received some support from the 21st Century leaders, but those are not of much value if no one likes you and no one wants to hear what you have to say, whether oral or written.
Critical Likability, it must be understood, goes far beyond mere popularity in school, although they share some essential tools and characteristics. Future employees must learn, while they are in school, the basic lessons of smiling, personal hygiene (including the control of bad breath and the release of hydrogen sulfide gas), grooming, table manners, the correct handshake, and at least the basics of dressing for success.
At a more advanced level students should be taught to listen, empathize, seem to agree, laugh, hug (only where clearly appropriate), tell jokes, drink (where and when culturally appropriate), play a social sport (like golf), and generally to be likable in the most efficient and effective senses of that word.
Perfect Failure
Commencement Address to Graduating Class of the Buckley School
Paul Tudor Jones, via a kind reader’s email:
When I was asked to give the commencement address to a graduating class of 9th graders, I jumped at the chance. You see, I have four teenagers of my own and I feel like this is the point in my life when I am supposed to tell them something profound. So thank you Buckley community for giving me this opportunity. I tried this speech out on them last night and am happy to report that none of them fell asleep until I was three quarters done.
When composing this message I searched my memory for my same experience back in 1969 when I was sitting right where you are. I realized that I could hardly remember one single speaker from my junior high or high school days. Now that could be my age. I’m old enough now that some days I can’t remember how old I am. But it could also have been a sign of the times. Remember, I was part of the student rebellion, and we did not listen to anything that someone over 30 said because they were just too clueless. Or so we thought.
Anyway, as I sat there considering this speech further, I suddenly had a flashback of the one speaker who I actually did remember from youthful days. He was a Shakespearean actor who came to our school to extol the virtues of William Shakespeare. He started out by telling us that Shakespeare was not about poetry or romance or love, but instead, was all about battle, and fighting and death and war. Then he pulled out a huge sword which he began waving over the top of his head as he described various bloody conflicts that were all part and parcel of Shakespeare’s plays. Now being a 15-year old testosterone laden student at an all boys school, I thought this was pretty cool. I remember thinking, “Yea, this guy gets it. Forget about the deep meaning and messages in the words, let’s talk about who’s getting the blade.”
As you can see, I have a similar sword which I am going to stop waving over my head now, because A) I think you are permanently scarred, and B) the headmaster looks like he is about to tackle me and C) some of you, I can tell, are way too excited about this sword, and you’re scaring me a little.
I’m here with you young men today because your parents wanted me to speak to you about service–that is, serving others and giving back to the broader community for the blessings that you have received in your life. But that is a speech for a later time in your life. Don’t get me wrong, serving others is really, really important. It truly is the secret to happiness in life. I swear to God. Money won’t do it. Fame won’t do it. Nor will sex, drugs, homeruns or high achievement. But now I am getting preachy.
Note to Union: Don’t Mess With Success at This High-Achieving Charter Middle School
Sometime last year, while negotiating a teacher contract for the KIPP Ujima Village charter middle school in Baltimore, founder Jason Botel pointed out that his students, mostly from low- income families, had earned the city’s highest public school test scores three years in a row. If the union insisted on increasing overtime pay, he said, the school could not afford the extra instruction time that was a key to its success, and student achievement would suffer.
Botel says a union official replied: “That’s not our problem.”
Such stories heat the blood of union critics. It is, they contend, a sign of how unions dumb down public education by focusing on salaries, not learning.
Baltimore Teachers Union President Marietta English, who was at the meeting, denied Botel’s account. But, she added, teacher salaries and working conditions are her priority as a negotiator. I think the union leader is right.
Off to private Brentwood School, thanks to the kindness of strangers
New friendships bloom as an L.A. judge and his college professor wife decide to foot the bill for a talented boy to attend the private school, which his mom can’t afford.
When David and Jacki Horwitz read an article in The Times about Lorelei Oliver’s struggle to find a good school for her son Kamal Key, their response was immediate: Perhaps, they inquired, there was a fund to which they could contribute to help the 12-year-old, who had been admitted to a prestigious but costly private campus?
Three weeks and several phone calls and e-mails later, Kamal and his family sat in the backyard of the Horwitzes’ spacious Pacific Palisades home, laughing as if they had known each other for years. The couple’s initial offer of a modest donation for a little boy who was a complete stranger has led to the unexpected meeting of two families whose lives may now be intertwined for years.
School spotlight: Evansville students go far with little
The High Mileage Vehicle Club, which designs and builds cars to get the best fuel mileage possible, has taken on new meaning with higher gas prices.
In addition, the club at Evansville High School is having a good run in the three years since it started.
The club’s car, which was equipped with a hydrogen booster and got nearly 170 mpg, was one of more than 20 entered in the Super High Mileage Vehicle Competition at the Dunn County Fairgrounds this spring. It took first place in mileage in the concept class and first place among all cars in the other categories as well as being the overall grand champion.
Last year, the club’s car — which had an electric motor and got 498 mpg — took second place in the individual categories and first place overall. It also earned $1,500 in scholarships, which were distributed among four members. Scholarships were not given out to contest winners this year.
While this year’s car got fewer miles per gallon, the students decided to try using a hydrogen booster, which makes fuel burn more completely, because they wanted to experiment with something different.
Can Charter-School Execs Help Failing Public Schools?
In the late ’90s, software entrepreneur John Zitzner was pretty close to being bankrupt. Yet within six months — in one of those typical “holy crap” dotcom-era stories — Zitzner had sold his company and become “a very modest millionaire.” Fantastic. And in one of those typical “What do I do with all this money?” stories, he decided to help make the world a better place — specifically by co-founding a charter school in Cleveland. (Read TIME’s report: “How to Raise the Standard in America’s Schools.”)
That was three summers ago. Fast-forward to last Monday, when Zitzner was in the audience in Washington as Secretary of Education Arne Duncan appealed to a gathering of charter-school operators to “adapt your educational model to turning around our lowest-performing schools.” For months now, Duncan has talked about closing 5,000 — or about 5% — of the nation’s lowest-performing public schools. By throwing down the gauntlet to charter schools, Duncan is challenging an industry that has become very proficient at opening up brand-new schools, but has very little experience in going into a preexisting school and turning those kids from low performers into high-quality students. But Zitzner, whose Entrepreneurship Preparatory has about 200 students in grades 6 to 8, can’t wait to dive in. In the past three years his students have gone from fairly abysmal test results to scoring in the top quartile on the Ohio standardized test, and he doesn’t see why that model can’t be replicated among other underperforming students. “Charter-school people are entrepreneurs — we like challenges, and this industry needs people who can make order out of chaos.”
Charter Schools Win a High-Profile Convert: Boston Mayor
Tom Menino, the longtime Democratic mayor of this city, is not known for rocking the boat or for eloquence. But earlier this month he stunned many in the city when he gave a powerful speech about school reform.
The speech took aim at the lack of progress in dozens of low-performing, inner-city Boston public schools, many of which have not met adequate yearly progress for five years running.
“To get the results we seek — at the speed we want — we must make transformative changes that boost achievement for students, improve quality choices for parents, and increase opportunities for teachers,” Mr. Menino said. “We need to empower our educators to quickly innovate and implement what works.” With that, Mr. Menino abandoned nearly two decades of personal opposition to nonunion charter schools, which have been bitterly resisted by Massachusetts teachers unions and their political allies. “I believe that the increased flexibility that charters provide can . . . help us close the achievement gap,” he declared.
