History Lesson



Bob McGum:

Want to read another story about the dumbing down of American students? How far SAT scores have dropped or standards fallen?
If so, look elsewhere.
We wish instead to draw your attention to one of those little starbursts of intelligence sparkling over our dreary educational landscape: The Concord Review. The first and only academic journal dedicated to the work of high school students, The Concord Review has published essays on everything from the sinking of the Lusitania to the Pullman Strike of 1894 and the Harlem Renaissance. Appropriately enough, it is published out of the same town where, more than two centuries back, embattled farmers fired the shot heard ’round the world.
The Review is the child of Will Fitzhugh, a Harvard alumnus who started publishing it out of his own home in 1987 while a high school teacher himself. The next year he quit his job and dedicated himself to the journal full-time. Not least of the spurs behind his decision was having witnessed two of his fellow Concord teachers propose an after-school program to help a select group of students prepare a serious history essay-only to be shot down by the administration on the grounds of “elitism.”
Like most such academic adventures, the Review isn’t going to challenge People magazine any time soon; it still has only about 850 subscribers, and among the high schools that don’t subscribe are a number whose students have been published in the Review itself. But it is attracting attention. The Concord Review has received endorsements from a cross-section of prominent historians such as David McCullough, Eugene Genovese, Diane Ravitch, and Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., who says “there should be a copy in every high school.” Another fan is James Basker, a Barnard and Columbia professor who also serves as president of the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History.
“Students rise to the expectations you have of them,” states Mr. Basker. “All you have to do is show them they are capable of writing serious historical essays, and off they go.” To emphasize the point, his institute will on June 10 inaugurate three annual Gilder Lehrman Essay Prizes in American History drawn from Concord Review essayists. This year’s first prize, for $5,000, goes to Hannah S. Field for her contribution about library efforts to suppress Frank Baum’s Wizard of Oz.
All this acclaim notwithstanding, Mr. Fitzhugh believes today’s culture retains a pronounced bias against academic achievement and excellence. He cites the example of a Concord Review essayist from Connecticut who subsequently went on to Dartmouth and will be studying medicine this fall at Harvard. When Mr. Fitzhugh paid a visit to her high school, he found that though everyone knew she was all-state in soccer, no one knew that an essay of hers had appeared in the Review, beating out hundreds of the finest student essays from not only the U.S. but other parts of the English-speaking world. It’s one of the things that tells him that the need for such a journal remains strong.
“Varsity athletics and athletes are celebrated everywhere,” Mr. Fitzhugh says. “We’ve decided to celebrate varsity academics.”




The Misplaced Math Student: Lost in Eighth-Grade Algebra



Tom Loveless:

Algebra in eighth grade was once reserved for the mathematically gifted student. In 1990, very few eighth graders, about one out of six, were enrolled in an algebra course. As the decade unfolded, leaders began urging schools to increase that number. President Clinton lamented, “Around the world, middle students are learning algebra and geometry. Here at home, just a quarter of all students take algebra before high school.”1 The administration made enrolling all children in an algebra course by eighth grade a national goal. In a handbook offering advice to middle school students on how to plan for college, U.S. Secretary of Education Richard Riley urged, “Take algebra beginning in the eighth grade and build from there.”2 Robert Moses ratcheted up the significance of the issue by labeling algebra “The New Civil Right,” thereby highlighting the social consequences of so many poor and minority students taking remedial and general math courses instead of algebra.3
The campaign was incredibly successful. Several urban school districts declared a goal of algebra for all eighth graders. In 1996, the District of Columbia led the nation with 53 percent of eighth graders enrolled in algebra. From 1990 to 2000, national enrollment in algebra courses soared from 16 percent to 24 percent of all eighth graders.
The surge continued into the next decade. Eighth-grade enrollment in algebra hit 31 percent nationally in 2007, a near doubling of the 1990 proportion. Today more U.S. eighth graders take algebra than any other math course.4 In July 2008, the State of California decided to adopt an algebra test as its eighth-grade assessment of student proficiency. The policy in effect mandates that all eighth graders will be enrolled in algebra by 2011.

Related from Jay Matthews.




Recalculating The 8th-Grade Algebra Rush



Jay Matthews:

Nobody writing about schools has been a bigger supporter of getting more students into eighth-grade algebra than I have been. I wrote a two-part series for the front page six years ago that pointed out how important it is to be able to handle algebra’s abstractions and unknown quantities before starting high school. I have argued that we should rate middle schools by the percentage of students who complete Algebra I by eighth grade.
Now, because of a startling study being released today, I am having second thoughts.
Tom Loveless, director of the Brown Center on Education Policy at the Brookings Institution, has looked at the worst math students, those scoring in the bottom 10th on the National Assessment of Educational Progress eighth-grade test. He discovered that 28.6 percent of them — let me make that clear: nearly three out of every 10 — were enrolled in first-year algebra, geometry or second-year algebra. Almost all were grossly misplaced, probably because of the push to get kids into algebra sooner.
The report (to be available at http://www.brookings.edu/brown.aspx ) reprints this simple NAEP problem:
There were 90 employees in a company last year. This year the number of employees increased by 10 percent. How many employees are in the company this year?
A) 9
B) 81
C) 91
D) 99
E) 100
The correct answer is D. Ten percent of 90 is 9. Add that to 90 and you get 99. How many of the misplaced students got it right? Just 9.8 percent. Not good.




Scrap the Sacrosanct Teacher Salary Schedule



Jacob Vigdor:

On what basis should we distribute rewards to salespeople?
It seems like a silly question, doesn’t it? First, “we,” meaning the public at large, don’t usually get to decide such matters. Second, there are obvious systems of rewards for salespeople already in place, foremost among them the system of commissions, which pays salespersons for the value they directly contribute to a firm’s operation.
Replace the word “salespeople” with “teachers,” however, and we move from the realm of silly questions to the arena of intense policy debate. Teachers are in most cases public employees. So we do, in theory at least, get to decide how they are paid. The commission model for teachers, variants of which have been proposed for many years, would involve compensating them for the value they provide to their school’s operation, that is, the degree to which they educate their students. Unfortunately, the amount of education a student receives in a given year is much harder to quantify than the total sales recorded by a clerk in a store. Measuring student growth has been made somewhat easier by recent advances in the tracking of student performance on standardized tests over time. But the notion of paying teachers on the basis of their ability to improve test scores, often termed “merit pay,” while earnestly debated by education policy researchers, is strongly opposed by teachers unions and is a political nonstarter in many parts of the country.




College Panel Calls for Less Focus on SATs



Sara Rimer:

A commission convened by some of the country’s most influential college admissions officials is recommending that colleges and universities move away from their reliance on SAT and ACT scores and shift toward admissions exams more closely tied to the high school curriculum and achievement.
The commission’s report, the culmination of a yearlong study led by William R. Fitzsimmons, the dean of admissions and financial aid at Harvard, comes amid growing concerns that the frenzy over standardized college admissions tests is misshaping secondary education and feeding a billion-dollar test-prep industry that encourages students to try to game the tests.
A growing number of colleges and universities, like Bates College in Maine, Lawrence University in Wisconsin, Wake Forest University in North Carolina and Smith College in Massachusetts, have made the SAT and ACT optional. And the report concludes that more institutions could make admissions decisions without requiring the SAT and ACT.
“It would be much better for the country,” Mr. Fitzsimmons said in an interview, “to have students focusing on high school courses that, based on evidence, will prepare them well for college and also prepare them well for the real world beyond college, instead of their spending enormous amounts of time trying to game the SAT.”
The report calls for an end to the practice of using minimum-admissions-test scores to determine students’ eligibility for merit aid. And it specifically urges the National Merit Scholarship Corporation to stop using PSAT scores as the initial screen for eligibility for recognition or scholarships. The National Merit Scholarship competition “contributes to the misperception of test scores as sole measures of ‘merit’ in a pervasive and highly visible manner,” the report says.




The Harmful Mistakes of Sex Education in School



Minette Marrin:

Those who can, do, according to the old saying, and those who can’t, teach. That has always seemed to me unfair. However, I have come to think that those who can’t teach, teach sex education.
Judged by its results – not a bad way of judging – sex education has been an utter failure. The increase in sex education here in recent years has coincided with an explosion of unwanted pregnancies and sexually transmitted disease (STD) far worse than anywhere else in Europe. Since the government’s teenage pregnancy strategy was introduced in 1999, the number of girls having abortions has soared. You might well be tempted to argue that sex education causes sexual delinquency.
Only two months ago the Health Protection Agency reported that a culture of promiscuity among the young had driven the rate of STDs to a record. Almost 400,000 people – half of them under 25 – were newly diagnosed, 6% more than in 2006.
When something fails, the usual procedure is to drop it and try something else. With sex education, the worse it gets, the more people cry out for more of it and earlier. Ministers are considering whether to make schools offer more sex education, offer it earlier and deny parents the right to withdraw their children from it.




Monona Grove Enrollment Numbers



Peter Sobol:

Preliminary 2008-9 enrollment numbers show a total of 3076 students “in seats” as of 9/10. This includes 85 4k students and community daycare sites, 107 4k students at Maywood and TP, and 133 open enrollment in (vs. 39 oe out).

It will be interesting to see County and Statewide open enrollment numbers.




Georgia School districts try to avoid ‘outspoken’ judge



Bill Torpy:

A consortium of rural school districts suing the state to change its funding formula withdrew its long-running case from Fulton last week and said it would refile it in another venue after it was reassigned to Schwall.
“We have been transferred to a judge who is new to the subject, and we have a judge whose political views are well-known,” said Joe Martin, the group’s executive director and a Democrat who has run for state school superintendent. “We could barrel ahead, but it is unlikely we would get a fair hearing” because of his political connections.
Gov. Sonny Perdue, who is fighting the school suit, appointed Schwall to the bench after Judge Roland Barnes was allegedly shot to death by Nichols in 2005. Perdue lashed out at the group’s “transparent attempt at forum shopping.”
Schwall, in an e-mail to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, said: “The integrity of our judicial system depends on a judge’s ability to make decisions based upon the law and the facts presented, not upon politics or any other outside influence.”




Engaging students in discussion on the achievement gap



A. David Dahmer:

Two hundred students from 23 school districts across the country will convene in Madison for the annual Minority Student Achievement Network (MSAN) Student Conference Sept. 24-27. This year’s theme will be “Futura De La Juventud: Laying Foundation, Affirming Our Identity, Building Relationships.”
“One of the things that the conference is really focused on is engaging the kids in discussion about the achievement gap and what barriers that students of color face in their school environment,” says Lisa Black, special assistant to the Superintendent for Race & Equity and the planning chair for the MSAN Conference. “Our goals really are to increase access to post-secondary options.”
African American and Latino students from around the country will gather at Monona Terrace to share experiences and develop strategies for improving student academic achievement and school climate in their home districts.
Black stresses that the students have really taken ownership of the planning for the conference.
“The students really set the agenda. We shared with them what MSAN is all about and they studied the gap and all the data in the district, and they are taking it from there,” she says. “It’s important that their voices and views are heard, and [that] it’s not always adults setting the agenda.”
Each year, MSAN holds a student conference in a different city across the United States where teams of students of member district schools engage in discussion and plan for follow up activities related to improving the effectiveness of their schools in educating African American and Latino youth.




How Well Do You Know Your State Board of Education?



Katy Vine:

Ever wonder who decides what your kids are taught in school? It’s not their principals and teachers. Nor is it their school’s superintendent. The Legislature, maybe? Not quite; the Legislature’s responsibility is to write the education code, fund the schools, and keep the state’s commitment to an accountability system. Every once in a while a lawmaker might pass a bill that authorizes Bible classes or requires daily recitation of the pledge of allegiance to the Texas flag, but the Legislature isn’t responsible for curriculum. Okay, then, how about the Texas Education Agency and the commissioner of education? Sounds right, but you’re wrong again. The TEA’s role is simply (or not so simply) to administer the education code.
Ready for the answer? The folks who decide what Texas schoolchildren will learn are the fifteen members of the State Board of Education. Don’t worry if you can’t name a single one. Almost nobody can! Members of this obscure panel are elected in down-ballot races that generate about as much media attention as an appointment to the Funeral Service Commission, but they are the ones who determine the classroom content for every public- or charter-school student in Texas. The board, currently composed of ten Republicans and five Democrats, oversees the process that establishes curriculum standards–known as Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills–and adopts or rejects textbooks. Members serve four-year terms and receive no financial compensation. (You heard right: They do this for free.) So how well do you know the powerful volunteers who control your children’s education? Take this quiz and see.




What Happens When a School District Fails?



Jessica Calefati:

Students, families, and educators in Georgia still are struggling to make sense of how a school district recently lost its accreditation and what impact the ruling will have on the students’ chances of getting into competitive colleges. The Southern Association of Colleges and Schools, one of the nation’s major accrediting agencies, revoked the Clayton County school system’s accreditation in late August after the district’s leaders failed to achieve eight of nine mandates for improvement set by SACS in February. Some of the unmet mandates include establishment of a responsible school board, removal of outside influences that disrupt the district’s ability to function, and adherence to a code of ethics.
SACS Chief Executive Officer Mark Elgart said the board’s problems permeated the system, but that dysfunction did not directly affect the quality of learning offered by the 50,000-student district located just south of Atlanta. Revocation of accreditation, he said, was the only way to prevent further damage to that system. The last school system to lose its accreditation in the United States was Florida’s Duval County in 1969.




Referendum Climate: “Missing Step: Control Spending”



Wisconsin State Journal Editorial:

Wisconsin received more evidence this week that its taxes are too high.
This time the evidence arrived in a study suggesting that Wisconsin may be just a few tax cuts away from becoming one of the nation’s economic hot spots.
The study, from the Pacific Research Institute in association with Forbes magazine, should give state and local policymakers new incentive to control spending so that taxes can be reduced.
The study of all 50 states, called the economic freedom index report, considered a variety of factors from tax levels to justice systems to make conclusions about how much economic freedom each state allows.
The goal was to forecast which states offer the freedom that should lead to prosperity in years to come.
The study showed that Wisconsin made the biggest leap forward among all states since a similar study was completed in 2004.

Much more on the November, 2008 Madison referendum here.




A Look at Madison’s Multi-age Classrooms



Andy Hall:

A third of the elementary classrooms in the Madison School District are multi-age. That figure, which has held steady for more than five years, makes Madison one of the biggest users of multi-age classrooms — some educators say the largest user — in Dane County.
Also, Madison’s Sennett Middle School is in its 33rd year of offering a unique multi-age classroom setting that blends sixth, seventh and eighth graders.
“I think it really does foster that sense of family,” said Sennett Principal Colleen Lodholz, who said the arrangement is so popular that several former students have returned to teach at the East Side school.
There’s nothing new about putting children of more than one grade level into a single classroom.
“Look at the one-room schoolhouse. That was all multi-age. That’s where we started in the United States,” said Sue Abplanalp, the assistant superintendent overseeing Madison’s elementary schools.




Cultivating Algebra Enthusiasm



Michael Alison Chandler:

“Nothing like a little math to wake you up in the morning,” teacher Tricia Colclaser said this month after a taxing round of word problems.
Abstract math is not known for its stirring effect on U.S. teenagers. But algebra is viewed as increasingly essential for students preparing for college or careers in a fast-changing, technology-based economy. Some advocates call it the new literacy.
Strengthening the math abilities of all students is a steep challenge. Educators must reinforce basic concepts early on, attract teachers talented enough to go beyond dictating formulas, and, not least, overcome an anti-math bias many students harbor long into adulthood, that all the hours spent mixing letters and numbers yield more punishment than possibility.
How hard can it be?
The question led this education reporter back to high school to try again, as a student in Colclaser’s class. To prepare, I reviewed a recent version of Virginia’s Algebra II Standards of Learning exam. The 50 questions conjured a familiar wave of anxiety but little actual math. I then fumbled through a state Algebra I test, getting at most 10 answers right.




Education Awareness Building in Hawaii



The Learning Coalition:

Everyone seems to have an opinion about education and they seem more than happy to share it. Nelson Mandela called education the most powerful tool you can use to change the world, while Mark Twain joked that he never let his schooling interfere with his education.
One thing we can agree on: We all want our children to have the best education possible — one that will help them to achieve their potential in life, no matter which path they choose.
Our kids in Hawaii deserve our best efforts to give them a good start on life, and we have a unique opportunity to do just that. With a culturally rich and ethnically diverse student population, Hawaii represents a microcosm of the world’s future. We have teachers, principals and administrators deeply committed to equipping our children with the knowledge and skills they’ll need, and parents ready to support them in their efforts. We have a Board of Education responsible for setting policies and standards to ensure all children a quality education, regardless of their economic background or ZIP code. By working together and coordinating our efforts, we have the potential to transform our island state into an educational model for others to emulate.




Schools use treats to maximize attendance on state’s annual tally date



Alan Borsuk:

It was 7:10 a.m. and the line of children and parents stretched across the gym at the Academy of Accelerated Learning, through the lobby and then down a long corridor of classrooms. Hundreds of people, families sharing a special time together, united by two things:
School and pancakes.
Oh, and one more thing: third Friday.
The pancake breakfast is a tradition at the southwest side elementary school in Milwaukee Public Schools. “There’s something special about pancakes and school,” said Principal Susan Miller as she cheerfully presided over the scene.
“My kids are really excited about it,” said Felicia Wilson, as she waited in line with Keandra, a second-grader, and Keandre, a 5-year-old kindergartner.




Wisconsin Governor Doyle Wants a Study of the Milwaukee Public Schools



Alan Borsuk:

Gov. Jim Doyle called Friday for “a complete evaluation of exactly where MPS is” as a first step toward any action by state government to do more for Milwaukee schools or change the way the school system is run.
“The School Board has really opened this up now,” Doyle said, referring to a surprising 6-3 vote by Milwaukee School Board members Thursday night in favor of exploring the dissolving of Milwaukee Public Schools, which is under financial pressure. Such a step might leave responsibility for Milwaukee schools in the state’s lap.
“I take this vote very seriously by the board and, if they are moving in this direction at all, it can only be done through state law,” Doyle said in an interview. “I think we need — everybody needs — to have a good clear understanding of where exactly the Milwaukee schools are.”
He said he wants to know whether MPS is making the best use of the money it has. He expects to announce plans for conducting such an evaluation next week.
“You can’t just sort of speculate that maybe we’re going to dissolve and have the state just sort of stand there,” Doyle said. “We have to be prepared.”




Inside Bay Area KIPP Schools



Jay Matthews:

One of the benefits of finding public schools that work is the chance to study them and discover exactly what they are doing that other schools are not doing. Sadly, this rarely seems a blessing to the educators at those schools, who have to fill out surveys, sit for long interviews and have strangers recording their every move. Often they feel like Michael Phelps might have felt, told to take a drug test every time he won an Olympic gold medal.
I sense these often intrusive assessments have been particularly galling for many teachers at KIPP (Knowledge Is Power Program). It has become the most studied school network in the country, one more indication that it is probably also the best. KIPP serves children from mostly low-income minority families at 66 schools in 19 states and the District, a network way too big for most researchers to handle. But since KIPP began to expand in 2001 from the two successful charter middle schools created by co-founders Dave Levin and Mike Feinberg, scholars have been examining pieces of the growing enterprise.
KIPP has cooperated with the research; one of its “Five Pillars” — its philosophy of success — is “Focus on Results.” Five independent studies of KIPP have been done so far. A sixth has just been released, available at http://policyweb.sri.com/cep/publications/SRI_ReportBayAreaKIPPSchools_Final.pdf.




Teens, Video Games & Civics



Amanda Lenhart Joseph Kahne Ellen Middaugh Alexandra Rankin Macgill Chris Evans Jessica Vitak:

The first national survey of its kind finds that virtually all American teens play computer, console, or cell phone games and that the gaming experience is rich and varied, with a significant amount of social interaction and potential for civic engagement. The survey was conducted by the Pew Internet & American Life Project, an initiative of the Pew Research Center and was supported by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. The primary findings in the survey of 1,102 youth ages 12-17 include —
Game playing is universal, with almost all teens playing games and at least half playing games on a given day. Game playing experiences are diverse, with the most popular games falling into the racing, puzzle, sports, action and adventure categories.
Game playing is also social, with most teens playing games with others at least some of the time and can incorporate many aspects of civic and political life.




Maryland Charter “School learns its lesson”



Nicole Fuller:

Since opening inside a Hanover office park three years ago, the county’s only public charter school has delivered strikingly high standardized test scores and, this year, produced a semifinalist – the only one in Anne Arundel County – in a national science competition.
But Chesapeake Science Point Public Charter School has also struggled. It faced the threat of closure after it failed to adhere to the county school system’s standards in special education, and in administrative and staffing matters. Fulfilling its plan to expand to include high-schoolers, the charter school expanded to ninth-graders last year but was ultimately forced to downsize back to sixth through eighth grades amid space concerns.
Though it remains on probation through June, administrators at the school said the outlook for this year is bright, pointing to improved communication with school system officials that has led to a greater understanding of expectations.




Mentoring, in addition to metal detectors, are needed to curb violence in schools.



Milwaukee Journal – Sentinel Editorial:

The stabbing at Hamilton High School last week, in which a 15-year-old girl was attacked with a knife by another girl in a bathroom, came on the day the school was to roll out its airport-quality metal detector.
But while metal detectors can keep weapons out of schools when properly used, we believe no machine could have guaranteed this attack wouldn’t have happened. Students can be attacked anywhere. In order to get a handle on violence, more mentoring is needed among at-risk youth.
The Violence-Free Zones program, now in use in seven local high schools, has been successful in reducing violence and suspensions by offering a big brother, big sister type of approach.

Police calls at and near Madison high schools: 1996-2006.




Milwaukee Considers Dissolving School District



Alan Borsuk:

The Milwaukee School Board voted Thursday night to begin looking into dissolving the Milwaukee Public Schools system.
The completely unexpected 6-to-3 vote followed a gloomy assessment of the short- and long-term financial situation of MPS from Superintendent William Andrekopoulos and several board members.
The resolution called for the administration to examine state and federal guidelines for dissolving the school district and who would be responsible for educating children in Milwaukee if that happened.
Voting for the resolution were board members Danny Goldberg, Jennifer Morales, Jeff Spence, Bruce Thompson, Terry Falk and Tim Petersons. Voting against were Peter Blewett, Michael Bonds and Charlene Hardin.
While it is extremely far from this step to MPS going out of business — and the action might turn out to be largely a symbolic protest of the MPS financial situation — it was by far the board’s most dramatic reaction to the pressures it is under. Those pressures include wide demands for better student achievement, a tightening money vise and the strong prospect of a double-digit increase in the property tax levy to be imposed this fall.
“We have ample evidence the current model is going to move us to ruination sooner or later,” Goldberg said.




History Scholar



Will Fitzhugh, The Concord Review
9/18/2008
College scholarships for specific abilities and achievements are not news. There are football scholarships and volleyball scholarships and music scholarships and cheerleading scholarships, and so on – there is a long list of sources of money to attract and reward high school students who have talent and accomplishments if those are not academic.
Consider an example: there is a high school student in Georgia, in an IB program, who spent a year and a half working on an independent study of the Soviet-Afghan War in the 1980s. This paper, a bit more than 15,000 words, with endnotes and bibliography was published in the Fall 2008 issue of The Concord Review, the only journal in the world for the academic research papers of secondary students, and it is a strong candidate for the Ralph Waldo Emerson Prize. If he were an outstanding baseball player, a number of college baseball coaches would have heard about him, and would be doing what they could to persuade him to accept an athletic (baseball) scholarship to their colleges.
But suppose he were not a HS athlete, but only a HS history students of extraordinary academic promise at the high school level. Would college professors of history know about and take an interest in his work? No. Would there be college history scholarships competing for him? No. Would his teacher, who worked with him on his independent study, attract attention from his peers at the college and university level? No.
I hope I am wrong, but based on what I have found out so far, there are no college scholarships available specifically for outstanding secondary students of history. There is abundant moaning and gnashing of teeth by edupundits and professors about the widespread ignorance of history among our young people, but when someone shows unusually strong knowledge of history at the Lower Education Level, no one pays any attention at the Higher Education Level.
In 21 years of working to publish 824 history research papers by secondary students of history from 44 states and 34 other countries in The Concord Review, I have not learned of a single instance of an author being offered a college scholarship based on their academic work in history.
When we lament that our adolescents seem more interested in sports than in academics, we might consider how differently we celebrate and reward those activities. High school coaches who are well known to and almost treated as peers by their college counterparts, receive no attention at all for their work as teachers, no matter how unusually productive that work may happen to be. Higher Education simply does not care about the academic work being done by teachers and students at the Lower Education level.
Behavioral psychology argues that by ignoring some behavior you will tend to get less of if, and by paying attention to and rewarding other behavior you are likely to find that there is more of it.
I know that students are being recruited for college scholarships in cheerleading, and I would dearly love to hear from anyone who can tell me of students being recruited for their specific academic work in a high school subject, like history, literature, physics, Chinese, chemistry and so on.
I realize there are scholarships for disadvantaged students, for students of high general intellectual ability, and the like, but where are the scholarships for specific HS academic achievement? After all, athletic and dance scholarships are not awarded on the basis of general tests of physical fitness, but because of achievement in the actual performance of particular athletic or artistic activities.
It is said that you get what you pay for, and it seems likely that you get more of what you value and reward in academics as well. If we continue to overlook and ignore the academic achievement of our secondary-level scholars of history and other subjects, that does not mean that some students will no longer work hard in their areas of academic interest. There may be fewer of them, and fewer teachers who see the point of putting in the extra coaching time with exceptionally diligent students, but if we continue down this road, at least folks in Higher Education ought to be aware that they are working just as hard to discourage good academic work at the secondary level as anyone, and they should stop complaining about the attitudes toward scholarship of the students in their classrooms, which, after all, are in part a result of their own contempt for and neglect of academic work at the secondary (aka “pre-college”) level.
Will Fitzhugh [founder], Consortium for Varsity Academics® [2007]
The Concord Review [1987], Ralph Waldo Emerson Prizes [1995]
National Writing Board [1998], TCR Institute [2002]
730 Boston Post Road, Suite 24, Sudbury, Massachusetts 01776 USA
978-443-0022; 800-331-5007, www.tcr.org; fitzhugh@tcr.org, Varsity Academics®




San Diego School Board Members “Agree to Strict Behavior Rules”



Maureen Magee:

They have been mocked for being dysfunctional, chided for their infighting and, most recently, ridiculed as busybodies and micromanagers.
During the past decade, San Diego school board members have been known as much for their reforms as for their behavior on and off the dais.
Now, in the peak of campaign season – three seats are up in November – when tensions tend to run high, trustees have agreed to a strict new governence code.
Months in the making, the new policies follow several workshops and retreats aimed at improving board relations and increasing efficiency. The 46-page document outlines issues such as acceptable behavior during public forums and professional conduct in the community, with the media and in the Normal Street headquarters of the San Diego Unified School District.
Superintendent Terry Grier negotiated a “no meddling” clause in his contract, as did his predecessor Carl Cohn. But the new policies specifically elaborate on the relationship between superintendent and trustees.
For example, the superintendent “is neither obligated nor expected to follow the directions or instructions of individual board members,” according to the document. Instead, directives are to come from the entire board and after a vote on any matter.




Unprepared high school grads focus of state education hearing



Diane D’Amico:

David Morales never thought much about going to college. But in 12th grade he watched his aunt graduate from The Richard Stockton College in Galloway Town-ship.
“After seeing her succeed in everything she wanted to do and watching her face light up with her own accomplishment, this inspired me to change my mind,” Morales told the state Board of Education on Wednesday.
It was too late to switch to college preparatory classes, but Morales thought that since he had received all A’s and B’s in his courses, he could still handle college. But when he took the Accuplacer placement test at Cumberland County College, he found he would have to take remedial courses first.
“Now I will be in school a year longer to get my degree (in radiology),” he said.
Morales was one of three current and former Cumberland County College students who spoke to the board about their high school experiences. CCC President Ken Ender brought them to the meeting to demonstrate the consequences for students who meet the current high school graduation requirements but are still not ready for college.




Educating Migrant Children



The Economist:

How migrants fare in school, and what schools can learn from them.
MOST teachers admit that occasionally, when a lesson is going badly, they suspect the problem lies not with the subject or pedagogy, but with the pupils. Some children just seem harder to teach than others. But why? Is it because of, say, cultural factors: parents from some backgrounds place a low value on education and do not push their children? Or is it to do with schools themselves, and their capacity to teach children of different abilities?
It might seem impossible to answer such a question. To do so would require exposing similar sorts of children to many different education systems and see which does best. As it happens, however, an experiment along those lines already exists–as a result of mass migration. Children of migrants from a single country of origin come as near to being a test of the question as you are likely to find.




Colleges spend billions to prep freshmen



AP:

It’s a tough lesson for millions of students just now arriving on campus: even if you have a high school diploma, you may not be ready for college.
In fact, a new study calculates, one-third of American college students have to enroll in remedial classes. The bill to colleges and taxpayers for trying to bring them up to speed on material they were supposed to learn in high school comes to between $2.3 billion and $2.9 billion annually.
“That is a very large cost, but there is an additional cost and that’s the cost to the students,” said former Colorado governor Roy Romer, chair of the group Strong American Schools, which is issuing the report “Diploma to Nowhere” on Monday. “These students come out of high school really misled. They think they’re prepared. They got a 3.0 and got through the curriculum they needed to get admitted, but they find what they learned wasn’t adequate.”
Christina Jeronimo was an “A” student in high school English, but was placed in a remedial course when she arrived at Long Beach Community College in California. The course was valuable in some ways but frustrating and time-consuming. Now in her third year of community college, she’d hoped to transfer to UCLA by now.
Like many college students, she wishes she’d been worked a little harder in high school.
“There’s a gap,” said Jeronimo, who hopes to study psychology. “The demands of the high school teachers aren’t as great as the demands for college. Sometimes they just baby us.”




Madison Superintendent Dan Nerad’s Remarks at a Dane County Public Affairs Council Event



Watch the 70 minute presentation and discussion or listen to this 29MB mp3 file

I took a few notes (with apologies for their brevity):

Dan Nerad:

Revisit strategic plan in January with local stakeholders. Preferred to lead with strategic plan but budget came first.
Hopes (MMSD) literacy programs are maintained.
He wants to listen to the community.
The District’s mission is teaching and learning.
The District has several strengths and some notable weaknesses, including achievement gaps.
Schools have a broader mission than workforce development, including helping students be good people.
Achievement gap is a significant issue. There is a compelling need to face an issue that affects Madison’s viability. These are not quick fix kind of issues. We need to talk more openly about this.
If I speak openly, I hope that people will be supportive of public education.
He wishes to reframe conversation around improvements for all students.
Five areas of discussion:

  1. 4k community conversation
  2. SLC grant (More here).  Use the grant to begin a conversation about high schools. The structure has been in place for over 100 years. Discussed kids who are lost in high school.
  3. Curriculum can be more workforce based. Green bay has 4 high schools aligned with careers (for example: Health care).
  4. Revisit school safety
  5. Curriculum
    – safety plan and response system
    – schools should be the safest place in the community
    – technology is not the complete answer
    – math task force; Madison high school students take fewer credits than other Wisconsin urban districts
    – reaffirms notable  math achievement gap

  6. Fine Arts task force report: Fine arts help kids do better academically,

Erik Kass, Assistant Superintendent of Business Services:

Discussed budget gaps.
Plans to review financial processes.
He previously worked as a financial analyst.
Goal is to provide accurate, honest and understandable information.

Jonathan Barry posed a useful question (46 minutes) on how the current MTI agreement prohibits participation in alternative programs, such as Operation Fresh Start (“nobody shall educate that is not a member of Madison Teachers”). Barry mentioned that a recent United Way study referenced 4,000 local disconnected youth (under 21). This topic is relevant in a number of areas, including online learning and credit for non-MMSD courses. This has also been an issue in the local lack of a 4K program.




Issues 08: Education



Tom Ashbrook @ OnPoint:

Crisis in the financial markets on a scale not seen since the Great Depression. And Americans awakening to challenges that go to the bedrock of the nation’s strength.
Nothing is ultimately more bedrock than the education of our children — the readiness of our citizens and coming generations to compete and lead in a global economy. To carry the responsibilities of democracy.
Where do McCain and Obama stand? This hour, we’ll ask their top advisers where McCain and Obama would lead on a basic issue for America — education.




Madison’s Leopold Elementary School’s Overcrowding in the News



Click to view a map displaying Leopold and nearby schools.

Tamira Madsen:

Five days after Madison Metropolitan School District and Madison School Board officials learn if voters approved a referendum to help finance the district budget, they’re expected to vote on options to ease overcrowding at Leopold Elementary.
And those fixes, especially the long-range ones, won’t be cheap.
Overcrowding at the largest elementary school in the district has been a hot-button topic the past several years, and the School Board has put the issue at the top of its priority list. Leopold had 718 students last year (new figures aren’t available yet), making it more than double the size of many district elementary schools and larger even than all but one middle school.
A decision can’t come quickly enough for the Leopold community, as evidenced by the 130 parents, teachers and faculty who attended a meeting Sept. 9 at the school. District officials were there to outline a variety of options (see them at www.mmsd.org/boe/longrange) they’re considering for the south Madison school located on Post Road.

Distance from Leopold Elementary to:




New school year, new programs in Minneapolis, St. Paul



James Sanna:

As a host of new charter schools opened this year in the metro area, trying to lure disaffected parents away from public school systems, both Minneapolis and St Paul public schools are rolling out new programs and programming changes to keep these families – and the state funding dollars that come with them – in the school systems. In particular, Minneapolis public schools have fired the opening salvo in a multi-year offensive against their poor reputation, with a thorough-going re-design of district high schools.
St Paul
Fortunately for St. Paul Public Schools (SPPS), the district does not have as serious a credibility problem as Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS). St Paul school board members Tom Goldstein and Keith Hardy told this reporter in July that district leadership believes not all parents want a “one-size-fits-all” public school. Some parents, Hardy said, are looking for specific types of programming, such as gender-segregated education or career-specific training in high school, and the district has to provide these or risk losing these families to charter schools.




An Email to Madison Superintendent Dan Nerad on Credit for non MMSD Courses



Dear Superintendent Nerad:
I was rather surprised to learn today from the Wisconsin State Journal that:
“The district and the union also have quarreled over the role of MTI members in online learning for seven years. Under the new agreement, ANY (my emphasis) instruction of district students will be supervised by Madison teachers. The deal doesn’t change existing practice but confirms that that practice will continue.”
You are quite new to the MMSD. I am EXTREMELY disappointed that you would “cave in” to MTI regarding a long-standing quarrel it has had with the MMSD without first taking the time to get input from ALL affected parties, i.e., students and their parents as well as teachers who might not agree with Matthews on this issue. Does this agreement deal only with online learning or ALL non-MMSD courses (e.g., correspondence ones done by mail; UW and MATC courses not taken via the YOP)? Given we have been waiting 7 years to resolve this issue, there was clearly no urgent need for you to do so this rapidly and so soon after coming on board. The reality is that it is an outright LIE that the deal you just struck with MTI is not a change from the practice that existed 7 years ago when MTI first demanded a change in unofficial policy. I have copies of student transcripts that can unequivocally PROVE that some MMSD students used to be able to receive high school credit for courses they took elsewhere even when the MMSD offered a comparable course. These courses include high school biology and history courses taken via UW-Extension, high school chemistry taken via Northwestern University’s Center for Talent Development, and mathematics, computer science, and history courses taken at UW-Madison outside of the YOP. One of these transcripts shows credit for a course taken as recently as fall, 2005; without this particular 1/2 course credit, this student would have been lacking a course in modern US history, a requirement for a high school diploma from the State of Wisconsin.
The MMSD BOE was well aware that they had never written and approved a clear policy regarding this matter, leaving each school in the district deciding for themselves whether or not to approve for credit non-MMSD courses. They were well aware that Madison West HAD been giving many students credit in the past for non-MMSD courses. The fact is that the BOE voted in January, 2007 to “freeze” policy at whatever each school had been doing until such time as they approved an official policy. Rainwater then chose to ignore this official vote of the BOE, telling the guidance departments to stop giving students credit for such courses regardless of whether they had in the past. The fact is that the BOE was in the process of working to create a uniform policy regarding non-MMSD courses last spring. As an employee of the BOE, you should not have signed an agreement with MTI until AFTER the BOE had determined official MMSD policy on this topic. By doing so, you pre-empted the process.
There exist dozens of students per year in the MMSD whose academic needs are not adequately met to the courses currently offered by MTI teachers, including through the District’s online offerings. These include students with a wide variety of disabilities, medical problems, and other types of special needs as well as academically gifted ones. By taking appropriate online and correspondence courses and non-MMSD courses they can physically access within Madison, these students can work at their own pace or in their own way or at an accessible location that enables them to succeed. “Success for all” must include these students as well. Your deal with MTI will result in dozens of students per year dropping out of school, failing to graduate, or transferring to other schools or school districts that are more willing to better meet their “special” individual needs.
Your rush to resolve this issue sends a VERY bad message to many families in the MMSD. We were hoping you might be different from Rainwater. Unfortunately, it says to them that you don’t really care what they think. It says to them that the demands of Matthews take primarily over the needs of their children. Does the MMSD exist for Matthews or for the children of this District? As you yourself said, the MMSD is at a “tipping point”, with there currently being almost 50% “free and reduced lunch” students. Families were waiting and hoping that you might be different. As they learn that you are not based upon your actions, the exodus of middle class families from the MMSD’s public schools will only accelerate. It will be on your watch as superintendent that the MMSD irreversibly turns into yet another troubled inner city school district. I urge you to take the time to learn more about the MMSD, including getting input from all interested parties, before you act in the future.
VERY disappointingly yours,
Janet Mertz
parent of 2 Madison West graduates
Tamira Madsen has more:

“Tuesday’s agreement also will implement a measure that requires a licensed teacher from the bargaining unit supervise virtual/online classes within the district. The district and union have bickered on-and-off for nearly seven years over the virtual/online education issue. Matthews said the district was violating the collective bargaining contract with development of its virtual school learning program that offered online courses taught by teachers who are not members of MTI.
In the agreement announced Tuesday, there were no program changes made to the current virtual/online curriculum, but requirements outlined in the agreement assure that classes are supervised by district teachers.
During the 2007-08 school year, there were 10 district students and 40 students from across the state who took MMSD online courses.
Though Nerad has been on the job for less than three months, Matthews said he is pleased with his initial dealings and working relationship with the new superintendent.
“This is that foundation we need,” Matthews said. “There was a lot of trust level that was built up here and a lot of learning of each other’s personalities, style and philosophy. All those things are important.
“It’s going to be good for the entire school district if we’re able to do this kind of thing, and we’re already talking about what’s next.”




The Death of WKCE? Task Force to Develop “Comprehensive Assessment System for Wisconsin”



The Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction [150K PDF], via a kind reader’s email:

Wisconsin needs a comprehensive assessment system that provides educators and parents with timely and relevant information that helps them make instructional decisions to improve student achievement,” said State Superintendent Elizabeth Burmaster in announcing members of a statewide Next Generation Assessment Task Force.
Representatives from business, commerce, and education will make recommendations to the state superintendent on the components of an assessment system that are essential to increase student achievement. Task force members will review the history of assessment in Wisconsin and learn about the value, limitations, and costs of a range of assessment approaches. They will hear presentations on a number of other states’ assessment systems. Those systems may include ACT as part of a comprehensive assessment system, diagnostic or benchmark assessments given throughout the year, or other assessment instruments and test administration methods. The group’s first meeting will be held October 8 in Madison.

A few notes:

.




Future of ‘No Child’ Left Behind



Maria Glod:

For the next president, one of the first domestic challenges will be to reshape the No Child Left Behind law, hailed six years ago as a bipartisan solution to America’s education troubles.
But in their race for the White House, Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Barack Obama (D-Ill.) are distancing themselves from what has become a tainted brand.
Education experts say the candidates have offered, at best, a fuzzy vision for the future of the No Child Left Behind law. Obama pledges to “fix the failures” of the law, while McCain seeks to avoid mention of it.




Beyond “No Child”



Anthony Brooks, Jeremy Miller, Seppy Basili, Sara Mead and Jordan Meranus:

How to improve under-achieving schools in America’s poorest communities has vexed policy makers for generations. President Bush’s No Child Left Behind law insists on accountability. But critics charge it encourages teaching to the test at the expense of real learning.
The law still sparks a loud argument — but as one of our guests today writes in the current issue of Harper’s magazine, there’s debate that test-prep companies such as Kaplan are profiting handsomely from the federal mandate to test, and test, and test again.




Re-examine testing of special ed students



George Skelton:

Almost half of children with special needs failed their high school exit exam this year. Legislation calls for identifying new ways to assess performance and devising new methods.
The predictable result came in last week from forcing students with disabilities to pass a high school exit exam in order to earn a diploma. Nearly half failed.
Failed. Demoralizing words for some kids who struggle daily to perform tasks most teens carry out with ease.
The psychological damage “is horrific,” says Sid Wolinsky, director of litigation for Disability Rights Advocates, which fought unsuccessfully for alternative ways to measure the knowledge of special education students.
“We had dozens of sworn declarations from parents about the deep depression that their disabled children went into when they didn’t pass the exit exam,” Wolinsky says. “When you’re a child with a disability, you start with problems of stigma, societal stereotyping and self confidence.
“Then you’re shattered when you can’t pass the exit exam. You blame yourself and have terrible problems with self worth.”




Talking with Jeremy Miller, Author of “Tyranny of the Test”



Benjamin Austen:

Jeremy Miller is the author of “Tyranny of the Test,” the September cover story. The article, which explains how No Child Left Behind has changed the structure of our schools-and how “teaching the test” takes more away from students than it gives-was based on his years of experience working as a test-prep “coach” for Kaplan, Inc. Associate Editor Ben Austen follows up with Jeremy Miller now that the issue is on newsstands.
1. At some point last year, you decided you wanted to write about working for Kaplan in New York City’s public schools. This kind of reporting, in which the participant’s journalistic intentions are not made explicit, is always complicated. But the issues here seemed to be compounded by your background as a full-time classroom teacher and by your desire to succeed at a job that you increasingly saw as problematic. What were some of the difficulties you faced in reporting this story?




Navigator’s for the College Bound



Julie Bick:

WHAT may be largest high school senior class ever in the United States is applying to college this fall. And thousands of students will look beyond their high school guidance counselors to help them get into the schools of their choice.
Private educational consultants take up where overburdened high school guidance counselors leave off. Charging by the hour or offering a package of services, these consultants usually meet multiple times with a student to talk about goals for college and beyond. They synthesize information from parents, transcripts and other sources to help create a list of colleges that might be a good match. Then they guide students through the application process, reviewing essays, preparing them for interviews and keeping them organized to meet deadlines.
There are 4,000 to 5,000 private educational consultants in the United States focused on college admissions, according to Mark Sklarow, executive director of the Independent Educational Consultants Association, based in Fairfax, Va. The number has doubled in the last five years, Mr. Sklarow said, and is expected to double again in the next three to five years. Consultants are most heavily concentrated on the East and West Coasts, and in larger cities and affluent suburbs across the rest of the country.




Massachusetts Lowers Science Standards



Worcester Telegram:

The state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education this week took a step back from educational excellence by approving “emergency rules” that will permit high school students to appeal for relief from the MCAS science requirement after just one failure.
The change undermines a key goal of the state’s education reform effort: to ensure all high school graduates have achieved at least minimal competence in science.
An appeals process exists for English or math requirements. However, students are eligible to appeal only after failing those portions of the MCAS tests three times — a policy that, properly, gives students an incentive to improve their skills.




Miami-Dade Superintendent’s Biggest Challenge



Kathleen McGrory:

As the new Miami-Dade schools superintendent, Alberto Carvalho will face a multitude of challenges — among them, boosting morale among teachers and navigating a financial crisis.
But none will be as tricky — or as paramount to his success — as working with the sharply fractured School Board.
”There’s a divided board that isn’t in harmony,” said former schools chief Merrett Stierheim. “That’s the mountain he’s got to climb. And it’s a very steep mountain.”
While board members were hesitant at first to appoint a permanent replacement for Rudy Crew last week, Carvalho, with a competing offer from Pinellas County in hand, told them he wouldn’t accept a temporary position.
He was offered the permanent top job with a 5-3 vote.




Want Schools to Work? Meet the Parents



Sandra Tsing Loh, making sense, continues her whirlwind media tour, this time at the Washington Post (thanks to a kind reader’s email for this link):

Yea, public school parents’ priorities are routinely placed below those of building inspectors, plant managers, even, given an errant bell schedule, cafeteria workers. Although, teachers are down in the bunkers with us, too. You’d be amazed how many extraordinary schoolteachers, who’ve served faithfully, conscientiously, daily for 40 years, just keep their heads down at this point.
Since most politicians have never dealt with U.S. public schools as customers themselves (in the same way that precious few of them put their own children in the Army), it might shock you, Mr. Future President, how poorly parents are treated out here in Public-School-Landia. You know how when you walk into a Wal-Mart or a McDonald’s, someone greets you with, “Hello! May I help you?” It’s startling how seldom you can expect this basic courtesy in public schools, how often we parents approaching the counter are treated as felons, or more often simply ignored by the frantically typing office-administrator-type-person. It’s a peculiar thing, in this 21st century. Forget best-practice research and technology-driven classrooms. I really believe if anyone in the multibillion-dollar industry called U.S. public education were ever listening to us, improved schools would start, simply, with this: “Hello! May I help you?”
Where does this culture of committee-oriented time wastage — even for parents who work — spring from? Here’s a clue. L.A. Unified recently faced such a budget shortfall that the district was actively recruiting potential save-our-schools spokesparents to submit their resumes and come to the central offices for “media training” if selected. Cut to the bone as it is, though, next year’s budget still slates a hefty $78.8 million for consultants (last year a consultant was paid $35,000 to teach our superintendent how to use a computer). And yes, I realize that I’m getting off-message by noting that our school district wastes money.. . . That’s like waving red meat in front of America’s seniors, who’ll probably vote to cut taxes again! Even though it’s not the bureaucracy, but the children who get squeezed. That’s all budget cuts mean, in the end. My kids have their assemblies on cracked asphalt. Now the cracked asphalt will have weeds.
But here’s the good news, Mr. Future President. In a testament to the incredible can-do American spirit (and I mean that in the most drop-dead-serious way), activist public school parents are fighting back against U.S. public education’s wasteful and unresponsive corporate “professionalism.” (Remember George Bernard Shaw’s quip about the professions being “conspiracies against the laity”?) City by city, homegrown “parents for public schools”-style Web sites are springing up daily, little rebel force fires on the horizon. From New York to Chicago, Seattle to San Francisco and beyond, activist parents are starting to blog their outrage over millions of education dollars wasted on non-working computer technology, non-child-centered programs and, of course, those entities whose education dollars are never, ever cut — the standardized-testing companies.

Some years ago, I sketched a chart illustrating the influence of various factions on our nearly $400M local school system. Topping the list were Administrators of both the school system and local teachers union. Far down were teachers (think of the “downtown math police”) and parents. Further still were students themselves. Taxpayers were not represented.
Observing public education rather closely for a number of years, it seems to me that all players, especially teachers, parents and students, would be better off with a far more diffused governance model (charters, smaller districts/schools, choice?).




School Choice Better Choice for Poor



Amy Hall:

Barack Obama, whose campaign is heavily funded by teachers unions, plans to funnel more money into the existing public education system. In this system, poor kids remain the only ones who don’t get to choose which school they attend. Mr. McCain is a strong supporter of school choice and has a record of this in Arizona.
As a teacher of 30 years, I am outraged that the liberal leaders in this country pretend to champion the poor, while, through their opposition to school choice, they act to keep the poor uneducated and poor.




Get education priorities straight or fall behind



Indianapolis Star Editorial:

Hoosiers need to re-evaluate level of emphasis they place on education.
High school life for millions of teenagers in the United States is filled with football games, part-time jobs, text messages and prom. And, oh yes, a dash of biology and geometry.
While their peers in other nations dig deep into academics, many American teens seem content to skim the surface.
Or at least that’s the premise of a documentary called “Two Million Minutes,” which revolves around the lives of six high school seniors — two each from China and India, and two from Carmel High School.
The documentary isn’t without its critics, who contend that executive producer Robert Compton set out to make the film with a predetermined point of view. Many educators also say the film fails to note the United States’ universal approach to education, in contrast to other nations’ more selective practices.




New Berlin board agrees to sell school to new air co-ed Military Academy



Erin Richards:

A Union Grove resident who has tried for 2 1/2 years to start a private, co-ed military school for sixth- through 12th-graders in southeastern Wisconsin may have finally found a home for the school – the old Prospect Hill Elementary School near the intersection of Racine and National avenues.
New Berlin’s School Board agreed this week to sell the property at 5330 S. Racine Ave. for $1.25 million to Jeff Starke, a retired U.S. Navy serviceman and lieutenant in the volunteer Civil Air Patrol who is eager to launch his Wisconsin Air Academy.
Starke’s quest to create a day academy and boarding school for middle school and high school students, a venture that even experts in the field say is a tough business, has been fraught with difficulties.
Plans for sites in three municipalities have fallen through because of legalities, municipal demands or neighborhood opposition. Two contracting firms are suing Starke over development issues, and Bill Orris, the Wisconsin Air Academy’s intended president and dean of admissions, was fired mid-year from his last job as dean of admissions at the Florida Air Academy, according to that school’s president, James Dwight.




To Raise Smart and Successful Children, Focus on Developing a Work Ethic



Thomas:

In one of Kurt Vonnegut’s most enduring short stories, Harrison Bergeron, everyone is finally equal thanks to the efforts of the Handicapper General. However, one of the many lasting messages of the story is a derisive one. In the futuristic world of Harrison Bergeron, accomplishment is no longer the measure of stature. Instead, it is all about trying, of recognizing effort, regardless of result.
However, a recent summary of three decades of research reveals that when it comes to raising smart children, developing their work ethic is in fact the most critical component. Whether it is success in school or in life, research indicates that innate intelligence and ability are simply not as important as a person’s level of effort.




South Dakota Schools “Adequately Funded”



Chet Brokaw:

State Education Secretary Rick Melmer testified Thursday he believes South Dakota’s school districts get enough money.
“Do I believe they’re adequately funded? The answer is yes,” Melmer said in the trial of a lawsuit challenging the state’s education funding system.
Melmer was called as a witness by lawyers representing parents and children who filed the lawsuit. They are supported by nearly 100 of the state’s 168 school districts. The education secretary also will testify as an expert witness for the state when state lawyers start presenting their defense to the lawsuit.
The lawsuit alleges the state is violating the South Dakota Constitution by underfunding public school districts, but the state contends the funding system is constitutional and provides students with adequate opportunity.

This must be a first, coming from an education Administrator.




Bellevue, WA Teacher Strike: District Offers Teachers a 5% Raise over 3 Years



Lynn Thompson:

The Bellevue School District increased its salary offer to teachers in a late-night bargaining session Thursday.
The total pay raise would be 5 percent over the three-year contract.
Union officials praised the move and said they planned to hold an “optimism” rally at Crossroads Park in Bellevue today while bargaining was expected to continue.
“It’s a move in the right direction,” said Michele Miller, Bellevue Education Association president.
The school district initially offered teachers 3 percent in wage increases over the three-year contract but raised the offer to 4.5 percent last week, saying the increase was contingent on voter approval of a levy in the third year of the contract.

Bellevue, WA Teacher Salary Schedule with 2008-2009 District Offer: 16k PDF
Curriculum is also an issue in this strike [32K PDF]:

Language Arts 4th – 12th grade: Many teachers believe there far too few lessons on punctuation and grammar. You cannot add lessons in these areas, since that might supplant the scripted lesson goal of the day.

Middle School Math: Since the district only allows one level of math at each grade in Middle School, there are many bored and overwhelmed students simultaneously stuck in the same class. The District’s current curriculum proposal wouldn’t allow a teacher to develop entirely new topics of instruction to engage the bored students. Additionally, while teachers would be allowed to make small adjustments for struggling kids, they couldn’t use those changes the following year without the approval of the Curriculum Department.

Certainly, Math and writing skills are fertile ground for curriculum controversy.
I asked Madison’s three superintendent candidates earlier this year if they supported a “top down” curricular approach or, simply hiring the best teachers. It’s hard to imagine a top down approach actually working in a large organization.




When Achievement Push Comes to Shove



Jay Matthews:

We have some of the top schools in the country in Arlington County. Is there some point with our children at which we could back off and not continue to push for rising achievement, an official goal of the county schools? Is there a way we can say, good enough is good enough?
My oldest son is in middle school. He is a talented but not gifted math student. Midway through this past school year, it was clear that he was not ready for algebraic thinking, and his seventh-grade math teacher compassionately helped us help him decide to move back to a more appropriate math level. Because I teach human development, I was able to help him understand that this wasn’t about being dumb, but a developmental marker he had not yet hit. He moved back to repeat the math class he took last year.
Now I have a boy who is not enthusiastic about math. He doesn’t believe he is good at it and doesn’t think math is fun, all because we want rising achievement for all students.




Young, inexperienced teachers recruited to New Orleans



Greg Toppo:

Amid the tag-team commotion of three new teachers prepping a science class for summer school finals one recent morning, one teacher sits alongside a student for what seems an eternity.
The exchange is perfectly ordinary, except that in post-Katrina New Orleans, little is ordinary.
The student, a young mother forced to move four times in the 15 months after the storm, is 20 years old.
Her teacher is 22.




‘Promoting social justice’ not our job, says Cambridge official



Gregory Katz:

The government should provide more money for higher education but should not meddle or try to use Britain’s universities to enhance social mobility, a senior official at the University of Cambridge told other educators Wednesday.
Vice-Chancellor Alison Richard called for greater government funding for Britain’s colleges and universities, warning that the United States, China, and many other countries spend a far higher percentage of their national wealth on schooling.
“As institutions charged with education research and training, our purpose is not to be construed as that of handmaidens of industry, implementers of the skills agenda, or indeed engines for promoting social justice,” she said, calling for the “independence and autonomy” of Britain’s universities to be maintained.
Richard was speaking at the opening of the annual Universities U.K. conference, held this year at Cambridge to focus on questions of funding. She emphasized the need for universities to be free to set their own educational and financial policies without outside interference.




2008 Presidential Candidates & School Choices



Sandra Tsing Loh:

As usual, Bruce Fuller and Lance Izumi , my fellow Education Watch contributors, make some fascinating points, none more startling to me than Lance’s casual throw-away that Barack Obama sends his children to private school. As a rabid public school Democrat, I crumpled in despair at the news.
Look, I am not in politics, I get no money from foundations, I do not get invited to lecture on third world eco-sustainability on luxury cruises. I have no highly placed blue-state friends and I will soon be a divorced woman because my die-hard Democratic husband will not brook any dissent, public or private, about our party.

Candidate websites: Bob Barr, McCain/Palin, McKinney/Clemente, Obama/Biden
Megan Mcardle @ the Atlantic has more.




WHERE WE STAND: America’s Schools in the 21st Century



Via a kind reader’s email:

Monday, September 15th
9:00 p.m. on Milwaukee Public Television (Channel 10)
11:00 p.m. on Wisconsin Public Television stations
In 1995, America’s college graduation rate was second in the world. Ten years later, it ranked 15th. As so many nations around the world continue to improve their systems of education, America can no longer afford to maintain the status quo. In an ever-changing, increasingly competitive global economy, is the U.S. doing all it can to prepare its students to enter the workforce of the 21st century and ensure our country’s place as a world leader?
WHERE WE STAND: America’s Schools in the 21st Century examines the major challenges for U.S. schools in the face of a changing world. Divided into five segments, topics include globalization; measuring student progress; ensuring that all students achieve; the current school funding system, and teacher quality.
WHERE WE STAND is airing at a critical time in our country’s history. Along with its companion website and a variety of dynamic outreach activities across the country, the program will inspire a national dialogue in the weeks prior to the November elections. Nationally recognized education experts and leading proponents of educational reform will put these examples in context. They include Geoffrey Canada, CEO of the Harlem Children’s Zone; Diane Ravitch, education historian; Wendy Puriefoy, President of Public Education Network; Chester Finn, Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institute; Rick Hess, Director of Education Policy Studies, AEI; Michael Rebell, Executive Director of the Campaign for Educational Equity; and Sharon Lynn Kagan, Associate Dean for Policy, Teacher’s College at Columbia University.

(more…)




American Federation of Teachers Initiates School Reform Plan



Greg Toppo:

Education reformers have long criticized the big teachers unions for blocking efforts to shake up public school bureaucracies, but a new, $1 million campaign from one of the largest may help put some of that criticism to rest.
The American Federation of Teachers, the USA’s second-largest teachers union, plans to announce today it will put up $1 million and seek additional philanthropic funding to help school systems try “sustainable, innovative and collaborative reform projects” developed by AFT teachers over the past several years.
AFT has more than 1.4 million members; about half currently work in schools.




How One’s ‘Number Sense’ Helps With Mathematics



Rob Stein:

Scientists have for the first time established a link between a primitive, intuitive sense of numbers and performance in math classes, a finding that could lead to new ways to help children struggling in school.
A study involving 64 14-year-olds found that the teenagers who did well on a test that measured their “number sense” were much more likely to have gotten good grades in math classes.
“We discovered that a child’s ability to quickly estimate how many things are in a group significantly predicts their performance in school mathematics all the way back to kindergarten,” said Justin Halberda, an assistant professor of psychological and brain sciences at Johns Hopkins University who led the research, published online yesterday by the journal Nature. “It was very surprising.”




Plugging In, Tuning Out
The digital culture has changed the way kids learn, but at the expense of literacy and cultural awareness.





Don Campbell:

I ask students on the first day of my journalism classes to fill out a questionnaire. Most questions inquire about their interest in journalism and any experience they have that is journalism-related. One question is: “What do you read, at least fairly regularly?”
Used to be, they would say The New York Times or Newsweek or Sports Illustrated. A few would list the local newspaper, or The New Yorker or The Economist to impress me. In recent years, the answers more often have been CNN.com, ESPN.com, blogs and other Internet offerings.
And then, at the beginning of the last semester, a student who claimed to be interested in journalism wrote this about what she reads: “Nothing.”
Her answer astonished me but shouldn’t have, because it epitomized the lack of intellectual curiosity in students that I have noticed in recent years, along with a decline in such basic skills as grammar, spelling and simple math. A sense of history? History is what happened since they left middle school.
As both a teacher and a father of two multi-tasking teenage daughters, I had long suspected that something was going on. While some students seem just as smart or smarter than they did 15 years ago, I’m also confronted with college sophomores who can’t identify Henry Kissinger or perform simple percentage exercises; who argue, as one did, that misspelling someone’s name was no big deal because I knew who she meant; students who begin sentences with lower-case letters and embellish news stories by adding their own facts.

Thanks to a kind fellow traveller for pointing this out.




School District Steps Back from Controversial Math Curriculum



Janese Heavin via a kind reader’s email:

Columbia Public Schools’ chief academic officer said the district is ready to compromise with the community when it comes to elementary math. But Sally Beth Lyon, who oversees district curricula, stopped short of saying concepts-based math would be replaced by a more traditional program.
“We’re going to figure out how to get something done so we can all move forward,” she told the Tribune. “We’re still at the table and will discuss the best way to move forward and include and acknowledge the community concerns we’re hearing.”
Lyon’s comments followed last night’s Board of Education meeting, where board member Ines Segert accused the district of appointing people to district math committees who are biased toward investigative math programs and not appointing mathematicians who favor more traditional math instruction.
Segert cited three University of Missouri math education professors who serve on district committees and have received grant funds to train Columbia teachers how to use concepts-based math materials. “They instruct teachers in a certain ideology that happens to be used in these textbooks we have in class,” said Segert, a vocal advocate of returning traditional math to classrooms.

Related:

Lyon’s comments followed what was almost a scolding from board member Ines Segert during last night’s board meeting. Segert criticized the district for appointing math education professors on math committees who seem to benefit from investigative math curriculum. She also accused the district of giving people incomplete data and summaries that skew results to justify current practices.
Lyon denied that anyone making curricula decisions receive district dollars. Any grant money they get comes from federal and state sources, she said.

Related: Madison School District Math Task Force Discussion.




More on the Waukesha School District’s Investment Difficulties



Amy Hetzner:

Trouble with a complex investment to help pay for retirement benefits has spread to other areas of the Waukesha School District’s bottom line, driving up the cost of a routine borrowing transaction by more than $300,000 this year, a district official estimated.
nterim business manager, said the district will pay about 1 percentage point more in interest on a $26 million short-term bond issue because of a recent decision by Moody’s Investors Service to downgrade its outlook to negative from stable. That translates to $260,000.
In addition, the district is paying $60,000 more in fees related to disclosures about its investment and a change in both financial adviser and bound counsel for the deal, Demerath said. The transaction is scheduled to be voted on tonight by the Waukesha School Board.
Demerath attributed the extra costs to the district’s 2006 investment in controversial financial instruments known as collateralized debt obligations, which have plummeted in value over the last year and could lead to legal action.




Obama & McCain on Federalism & Schools



Sam Dillon:

Senator Barack Obama learned how hard it can be to solve America’s public education problems when he headed a philanthropic drive here a decade ago that spent $150 million on Chicago’s troubled schools and barely made a dent.
Drawing on that experience, Mr. Obama, the Democratic nominee for president, is campaigning on an ambitious plan that promises $18 billion a year in new federal spending on early childhood classes, teacher recruitment, performance pay and dozens of other initiatives.
In Dayton, Ohio, on Tuesday, Mr. Obama used his education proposals to draw a contrast with Senator John McCain, his Republican opponent, and to insist to voters that he, more than his rival, would change the way Washington works.
Were he to become president, Mr. Obama would retain the emphasis on the high standards and accountability of President Bush’s education law, No Child Left Behind. But he would rewrite the federal law to offer more help to high-need schools, especially by training thousands of new teachers to serve in them, his campaign said. He would also expand early childhood education, which he believes gets more bang for the buck than remedial classes for older students.

Sam Dillon:

Among his short list of initiatives, Mr. McCain, the Republican presidential nominee, includes bonus pay for teachers who raise student achievement or who take jobs in hard-to-staff schools, an expansion of after-school tutoring, and new federal support for online schools and for the voucher program in Washington, D.C.
The brevity of Mr. McCain’s plan reflects his view that the federal government should play a limited role in public education, and his commitment to holding the line on education spending, said Lisa Graham Keegan, a McCain adviser and former Arizona education commissioner.
“Education is obviously not the issue Senator McCain spends the most time on,” Ms. Keegan said, adding that his plan’s limited scope should not be interpreted as a lack of commitment to education and school reform. “He’s been a quiet and consistent supporter of parents and educators who he thinks are making a difference.”




9% of state students habitually truant



Dani McClain:

More than 9% of Wisconsin’s students had at least five unexcused absences a semester in the 2006-’07 school year, according to a report released today by the state Legislative Audit Bureau.
The report, a statewide review of best practices in public school districts’ truancy reduction efforts, also found that nearly half of all Milwaukee Public Schools students, 46%, are habitually truant. The district has worked with the Milwaukee Police Department since 1993 to operate the Truancy Abatement and Burglary Suppression program.

470K PDF Report




Property Tax Effect – Madison School District



As the cost of running the district continues to rise, and as Madison homeowners and families find it increasingly difficult to make ends meet, it is easy to think that our property taxes are also ever rising. But that’s not the case, at least as regards the portion that goes toward our schools. Over the past 15 years, the schools’ portion of Madison property taxes has declined 6%, on average. The decrease is 9% if you adjust for today’s higher enrollment figures (1993 = 23,600; 2007 = 24,200). And it plunges to a 36% decrease if you adjust for inflation; (a dollar today is worth 30% less than it was 15 years ago).
The chart below, based on local funding of MMSD and data from the city assessor’s office, shows the recent history of school mill rates, the rate that is applied to your assessed property value to determine how much you contribute towards Madison schools (10 mills = 1.0% of the assessed property value). The reported rate has dropped from 20 mills to 10, but property values have doubled thanks to the general rise in home prices (termed “revaluations” by the assessor’s office), so the rate is more appropriately captured below by the “Net of Revaluations” line. That line is then adjusted for school enrollment (the red line), and inflation (the heavier blue line).

There are three important caveats to the above statements: 1.) school taxes are lower on average, but if your home has increased in value by more than about 110% since 1993, then you will be paying more for schools; 2.) it is the schools portion of property taxes that is lower on average; the remaining portion of property taxes that pays for the city, Dane County, Wisconsin, and MATC, has risen; 3.) other sources of Madison school funding (state and federal funds, and grants and fees) have also gone up; (I have not done the much more complicated calculation of real increase in funding there).
That the infamous schools’ portion of property taxes has declined over these past 15 years is quite a surprising result, and certainly counterintuitive to what one might expect. How is this possible? First, the school finance structure put in place by the state years ago has worked, at least as far as holding down property taxes. The current structure allows about a 2% increase in expense each year, consistent with the CPI (Consumer Price Index) at the state level. (In fact, local funding of the MMSD has increased from $150 million in 1993 to $209 million in 2007, equivalent to about a 2.4% increase each year.) Of course, the problem is that same structure allows for a 3.8% wage hike for teachers if districts wish to avoid arbitration, an aspect that has essentially set an effective floor on salary increases (with salaries & benefits representing 84% of the district budget). The difference between the revenue increases and the pay increases, about 1-2% annually, is why we face these annual painful budget quandaries that can only be met by cuts in school services, or by a referendum permitting higher school costs, and taxes.
The second reason today’s property taxes are lower than they have been historically is growth, in the form of new construction (i.e. new homes & buildings, as well as remodelings). What we each pay in school property taxes is the result of a simple fraction: the numerator is the portion of school expenses that is paid through local property taxes, while the denominator is the tax base for the entire city (actually the portion of Madison and neighboring communities where kids live within the MMSD). The more the tax base grows, the larger the denominator, and the more people and places to share the property taxes with. Since 1993, new construction in Madison has consistently grown at about 3% per year. Indeed, since 1980 no year has ever seen new construction less than 2.3% nor more than 3.9%. So every year, your property taxes are reduced about 3% thanks to all the new construction in town. I leave it to the reader to speculate how much the pace of new construction and revaluations will decline if the schools here should decline in quality.
FYI, the figure below shows how new construction and revaluations have behaved in Madison since 1984, as well as total valuations (which is the sum of the two).




Stained-glass window will honor school library aide



Andy Hall:

One year ago today, as she walked across Cherokee Drive to her job, school library assistant Becky Sue Buchmann was killed by a motorist dropping off his son at Cherokee Middle School.
Buchmann, 48, parked across the street from the Near West Side school on Cherokee Drive — a common practice for staff at the school — and was hit as she walked across to the school mid-block.
Since then, students and staff have raised thousands of dollars to build a stained glass window in her honor, but the traffic patterns outside the school remain unchanged.




Memorial, West top state in National Merit semifinalists



Tamira Madsen:

Students from Madison Memorial and Madison West continued a tradition of academic excellence among their peers in Wisconsin, as semifinalists were announced Wednesday for the 2009 National Merit Scholarships. Twenty-six students each from Memorial and West qualified in the prestigious nationwide competition, the most students from any other high school in the state.
Among other Madison schools, eight students qualified from Edgewood, six from East, two from La Follette and one home-schooled student also qualified, for a total of 60 National Merit semifinalists from the city.
It’s the sixth year in a row that at least 60 or more district students have qualified at the semifinalist level. Sixty-two students qualified in 2007, 67 in 2006 and 60, 69 and 67 students the three preceding years.
Superintendent Dan Nerad said he was pleased to learn about the students’ achievements.
“It’s very exciting,” Nerad said in a telephone interview. “First of all, I think it’s a remarkable performance for these students, and obviously, we’re proud of their performance. The kids in the school district are high-performing kids, once again, we continue to see how they’re doing.




Catering to the Teenage Reader



Jay Matthews:

As a child, I always enjoyed reading. But when high school teachers began to demand that I analyze what I read, I resisted. Was it really necessary to drag symbolic modes out of the lively dialogue of “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” or painstakingly dissect all the relationships in “The Great Gatsby”?
In the Outlook section of the Aug. 24 Post, Nancy Schnog, an English teacher at the private McLean School in Potomac, rushes to the defense of reading-for-fun adolescents like me. She suggests the traditional way of teaching her subject should be discarded — a notion that occurs to her after she sees stacks of works by Charles Dickens, John Steinbeck and Zora Neale Hurston on a bookstore table labeled “summer reading.” She also questions her own decision to ask her students to read British Romantic poets William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge for two weeks after a month’s study of American transcendentalists.




Goal by Goal



Steven Davis:

I WAS born and raised in Milwaukee, the youngest of five children. My mother worked as a postal clerk, and my father was a welder and line supervisor.
My parents set a goal that all of their kids would go to college. All five of us have college degrees. My mother had started college at 16, but had finished only a year and half when her mother became ill and she had to quit. My father never had the means to go to college.
Recently, my mother told me, “Our best friends were the people at our credit union.” My parents borrowed money at the beginning of each school year and hurried to try to pay back that loan before the next school year started.
Their unspoken message was that the sky is the limit. They never said that because you are an African-American, you can go only this far or do only this or that. They just said, “Go for it.”




Does Spending More on Education Improve Academic Achievement?





Dan Lips & Shanea Watkins:

Debates about how to improve public education in America often focus on whether government should spend more on education. Federal and state policy makers proposing new education programs often base their arguments on the need to provide more resources to schools to improve opportunities for students.
Many Americans seem to share this view. Polling data show that many people believe that government allocates insufficient resources to schools. A poll conducted annually from 2004 through 2007 found that American adults list insufficient funding and resources as a top problem facing public schools in their communities.[1]
While this view may be commonly held, policy makers and citizens should question whether histori cal evidence and academic research actually support it. This paper addresses two important questions:
How much does the United States spend on public education?
What does the evidence show about the relationship between public education spending and stu dents’ academic achievement?
The answers to these questions should inform federal and state policy debates about how best to improve education.
Twenty-nine states and the District of Columbia face budget shortfalls totaling approximately $48 billion for fiscal year 2009.[2] Even more states could face shortfalls in the near future. At the federal level, long-term budgets face a challenging fiscal climate. Pro jected growth of entitlement programs is expected to place an ever-increasing burden on the federal budget, limiting the resources available for other purposes, including education.[3]

Related: Charts – Enrollment; Local, State, Federal and Global Education Spending




Public TV documentary details Green Bay East High School shooting threat in 2006



Warren Gerds:

Coming at a difficult topic from many angles, a new TV documentary examines the 2006 threats of violence against Green Bay East High School.
“Any School, Any Time” is a compelling hour.
It seeks balance and perspective in a case where deadly harm appears to have been averted.
Everything is told through a sophisticated technique that uses no narration, which could take on a slant. Rather, only the voices of people interviewed or recorded in news conferences, court or jail are heard.
Also, instead of quick sound bites, key people are allowed to be heard at length so explanations are fleshed out. This includes the Brown County district attorney, a representative of the U.S. Secret Service, Green Bay police chief, defense attorneys, a forensic psychiatrist and presiding judge.




Rhee’s ‘Plan B’ Targets Teacher Quality
Strategy Might Include New Evaluation Process, Linking Licenses to Classroom Performance



Bill Turque:

Schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee is preparing to bypass the Washington Teachers’ Union in pursuit of the objective she considers essential to overhauling the District’s public schools: the power to fire at will teachers she deems ineffective.
What she calls “Plan B” involves a more aggressive use of powers she already has and that are not subject to contract negotiations with the union. These could include strengthening the existing system of annual personnel evaluations that spell out procedures for terminating teachers.
Rhee is also positioned to benefit from a potentially groundbreaking revision that has unfolded largely outside public view during contract talks. It would make the District school system one of the few in the country to link the licensing of teachers to their classroom performance, rather than their academic credentials. New rules, scheduled to go into effect this week, would grant State Superintendent of Education Deborah A. Gist the discretion to create an advanced teaching credential specifying the bench marks instructors would have to meet to keep their jobs.




Colorado Amendment 59: does it shore up education or undermine TABOR?



Benry Morson:

It seemed like a good idea at the time.
Amendment 23, approved by voters in 2000, required funding increases to raise the state’s support for public schools to the national average.
But when Colorado’s economy soured in the early part of this decade, legslators found themselves slashing other programs — such as health care and higher education — to keep the promise to public schools.
Amendment 59 on the Nov. 4 ballot would resolve that problem in the future by creating a savings account for schools to be filled when economic times are good and spent when times are bad.
During those lean years, the legislature balanced the budget with “a lot of baling wire and duct tape,” said House Speaker Andrew Romanoff. “This (Amendment 59) is a much more responsible way to balance the budget.”




Teacher Compensation Generation Gap



Paul Tough:

ne striking phenomenon revealed by the Denver negotiations was a generational split among teachers. Younger teachers were generally in favor the deal being offered, and older teachers tended to oppose it. (Some veteran teachers told the Denver Post that they felt “dissed.”)
A similar generational divide has appeared in D.C., where, as the Washington Post reported last month,
many of the District’s 4,000 public school teachers are locked in a heated debate over Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee’s proposal to offer salaries exceeding $100,000 for those willing to give up job security and tie their fates to student achievement. … The split in the teaching corps largely, but not exclusively, is occurring along generational lines, with younger teachers more willing to accept the risks and older ones often questioning the proposal.
The Post story mentioned an anonymous young teacher-blogger, “D.C. Teacher Chic,” who is a fan of Chancellor Rhee and is decidedly in favor of her new deal (under which teachers could choose a “green plan” that would trade tenure for a higher salary or a more traditional “red plan”). Her blog–often funny, usually outraged–offers a great insight into the mind of a teacher on the young side of this growing generational divide.




We scrutinize MPS because we care about the community



Thomas Koetting:

Q. It seems sometimes that the Journal Sentinel does nothing but bash the Milwaukee Public Schools. There are a lot of people working for MPS who work hard to make a difference in kids’ lives. They are writing grant proposals to make it possible for kids to attend camps they couldn’t otherwise attend, and creating programs to keep kids involved in school and off the streets. As a former camp counselor and volunteer in the classroom, I know how important these things are.
A. I share your concern that our coverage can seem, at times, negative – not just about MPS, but about any number of community institutions we cover. It is an issue we talk about a great deal because we don’t just report on this area – we live here ourselves. What I would ask you to think about is that what drives us to report what may seem like a negative story is actually our concern, our passion, for our community.
When we write about a school board member going to a convention but never attending its sessions, it is because that money could have been used to improve the educational experience of students and teachers. When we write about the failure of the $102 million Neighborhood Schools Initiative building plan, it is because that money could have been used for other projects to transform the lives of students, teachers and staff alike. When we write about the district receiving a low level of funding to educate disabled children, it is because other districts seem to be taking better advantage of available money to improve the lives of children who already face so many challenges.




Grand Prairie (Texas) parents drop schools not making grade



Katherine Leal Unmuth:

Rae Ann Forester was losing confidence in Grand Prairie High School’s academic program. Even though she was president of the Parent Teacher Student Association, she took a decisive step away from the school.
Parents whose children attend struggling public schools may feel like there’s no way out. But Ms. Forester and other persistent parents are taking control of their children’s education and finding options.
“What do you do in a school that’s low-performing?” Ms. Forester asked. “If we can’t get what we need from that specific campus, we do what we need to as a family. I do want people to have options, and that’s what I’m advocating.”
After the Texas Education Agency rated Grand Prairie High School “academically unacceptable” the previous two years, the school’s poor reputation prompted some families to act.




School Governance in Washington, DC: The “Nuclear Option”



Paul Tough:

Today’s paper brings the news that Michelle Rhee, the superintendent of the D.C. public schools, has come up with a Plan B to use if the D.C. teachers union refuses to accept her proposed new contract.
Plan A, as I wrote last week, was a contract under which teachers could give up tenure in return for large pay increases. Plan B, essentially, is a system in which teachers lose tenure and don’t get large pay increases. Rhee says she and the state superintendent could also change the licensing requirements for the district’s teachers so as to require them to demonstrate classroom performance–the kind that would have earned them big bonuses under the contract–merely to keep their jobs.
The story in the Washington Post suggests that Rhee is not only aware of the city’s generation gap among teachers, she also plans to take advantage of it.
Rhee’s ultimate goal is clear: to weed the District’s instructional corps of underperformers and remake it, at least in part, with younger, highly energized graduates of such alternative training programs as Teach for America, where she began her career. Unlike many tenured Washington teachers, those emerging from such programs are unlikely to invest their entire working lives in education. But they will, in Rhee’s estimation, be more inclined to embrace her core message: that children can learn no matter what economic and social conditions they face beyond the classroom and that teachers should be held directly accountable for their progress through test scores and other measurements.




School districts walk fine line between integration, discrimination



Kerry Lester:

The U.S. Supreme Court’s June 2007 decision to strike down integration plans in two public school districts was based on a simple premise: discrimination is discrimination.
“The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race,” Chief Justice John Roberts declared, “is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.”
In the wake of that ruling, large, ethnically diverse districts are now finding themselves in uncharted waters.
Though prohibited from using race-conscious measures to integrate their schools, districts also must ensure academic success for all students – regardless of skin color or neighborhoods in which they live.
The class-action racial bias suit pending against Elgin Area School District U-46 is one of the first major school discrimination cases to be decided since last year’s Supreme Court ruling.
Its outcome, experts say, could have for far-reaching effects.
“Class-action school cases are relatively rare,” said Michael Kaufman, Academic Dean and Director of the Child Law and Education Institute at Loyola University Chicago. “This case will almost by definition have profound implications in regards to remedies after last summer’s ruling.”




Prince William County, Maryland Pupils Still Grapple With Math Test



Ian Shapira:

New state test results show that Prince William County’s third-graders are struggling to score at the highest level since the implementation of a controversial math program that was intended to boost performance.
The scores, which are the first state Standards of Learning (SOL) results to gauge the new program’s effectiveness, reveal that fewer than half of Prince William’s third-graders scored in the advanced category this year, the first that the Pearson math program “Investigations in Number, Data, and Space” was taught in that grade. Last year, third-graders who had not begun “Investigations” posted the same results.
The flat scores are a sizable decline since 2006, when 56 percent of third-graders reached the advanced level in math.
” ‘Investigations’ didn’t cure the problem,” said Vern Williams, a Fairfax County teacher and former member of the National Mathematics Advisory Panel who was invited by the Prince William School Board to speak at its work session later this month.

It will be interesting to see what, if any effect the soon to be released Madison Math Task Force report has on the local curriculum.
Math Forum




Teaching Fractions Effectively Webcast



The Center for Comprehensive School Reform and Improvement at Learning Point Associates:

This interactive video webcast is hosted by The Center for Comprehensive School Reform and Improvement at Learning Point Associates. The Center is funded by the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education of the U.S. Department of Education. The webcast will highlight the following:
Recommendations from the National Mathematics Advisory Panel
Instructional strategies to foster deep “conceptual and procedural knowledge of fractions”
Video clips from teacher training sessions and elementary classrooms
There is no charge for this event. It is open to the public, so please invite your colleagues to join in. Registrationis required, and minimal information is requested.
To register, visit the webcast registration page.
For more information, please contact Abner Oakes. We look forward to your participation!

The Center for Comprehensive School Reform and Improvement




Cry for change resounds in St. Paul schools



Emily Johns:

The St. Paul School District this fall is planning on engaging community members, parents and school district staff in an indepth discussion about the district’s future with one major premise: Things need to change.
The district, which serves about 38,800 students, faces considerable challenges. It has made more than $93 million in budget cuts over the last nine years. Only half its students are proficient in reading, the achievement gap between white students and students of color is among the widest in the nation, and federal and state expectations for student achievement are accelerating.
The district “is at a crossroads,” according to a presentation that district staff made to school board members on Thursday night. “Business as usual is not a sustainable option for achieving our mission.”
The St. Paul district’s efforts to comply with federal and state desegregation laws over the past 30 years and retain students have resulted in a complex network of magnet and neighborhood schools.




19 Wisconsin Felons Kept Teaching License



Jason Stein:

But Robertson, a former middle school principal in Milwaukee, still had at least one thing going for him — he didn’t lose his license to teach children in Wisconsin, at least not then.
Robertson was among a group of 18 people licensed to teach in the state as of June who had felony convictions and were still being monitored by probation or parole agents at the start of this year, a Wisconsin State Journal investigation found. That number included at least 13 felony convictions previously unknown to the agency in charge of licensing the state’s teachers.
As a result of the newspaper’s reporting, the state Department of Public Instruction has revoked or placed under scrutiny the licenses of Robertson and seven others.
In their cases, the State Journal found no evidence that any students faced immediate risk. Those eight people under scrutiny, including Robertson, are not shown in state records as currently teaching in a public school, and they likely would have faced hurdles returning to teaching because of their convictions.

Related.




A Look Back at a 2001 Dayton School Board’s Results



Scott Elliott:

Let’s remember back for a moment to the excitement of 2001. Gail Littlejohn, a retired corporate attorney, and three allies won four seats on the school board, taking control with a majority and promising big changes that would help lead the district back to respectability.
And for the first few years, the Kids First team had a remarkable run of successes. They replaced a well meaning but floundering superintendent with an efficient manager in Percy Mack, a move that was well received in the community. They put a reform in place that emphasized teacher training and focused on math and reading instruction. They got the NAACP and the state to agree to settle the 20-year-old desegregation case, bringing millions in cash and releasing the district from court supervision. They got a huge bond issue passed to rebuild all the schools in the city. Eventually, Dayton even had enough test score gain to jump from “academic emergency to “continuous improvement” in the state ratings. And for at least those first few years, Kids First got support from the rest of the school board, business leaders and much of the community.




Later school start is good for state



Edward Lump:

I’d like to remind readers that the Wisconisn laws enacted in 1999 and 2001 actually came closer to reinstating a much older tradition of starting public school after Labor Day that goes back many, many years. As a matter of fact, school used to get out before Memorial Day as well.
A later school start date provides more time for family vacations and is good for the tourism industry. These days, family time is so important. Everyday life is hectic with so many activities and so much to do. Family time and the age-old tradition of the family vacation is critical to building strong families. And August has some of the best weather that Wisconsin has to offer, which makes it a great month for vacations.
On the other hand, June is usually cooler and wetter than August, and water temperatures are much cooler. Wisconsin summer tourism is based on water activities — late August is prime water sport season; June is not. Great family activities — such as Green Bay Packers training camp, the Milwaukee Brewers pennant drive and many county fairs — all create excitement and entertainment in late August.




The nation’s fiscal wake-up call



Allan Knepper:

Recently, I joined a throng of 25 people in a theater with a capacity of 250 to view the premiere of the documentary “IOUSA.” The film, directed by Patrick Creadon, outlines the U.S. national debt, how we got to where we are and the dire predictions for the future. It is loosely coordinated around the “Fiscal Wake-up Tour,” a road show featuring former U.S. Comptroller General David Walker and Robert Bixby, executive director of the Concord Coalition.
I have been a huge fan of the straight-talking Walker since seeing him on CBS’ “60 Minutes” more than a year ago. He gave an impassioned interview then, outlining the rapidly growing federal deficit and its impact on current and future generations.
Joining in a live panel discussion after the film’s showing were Walker, Warren Buffett, Blackstone Group co-founder Peter Peterson, Cato Institute Chairman William Niskanen and AARP CEO Bill Novelli.
While I’m sure they were not as entertaining as the fantasy thrillers being shown in adjacent theaters, the facts and figures laid out in the movie were every bit as chilling as a horror movie to anyone who cares about the future of our country and the country we will leave to our children and grandchildren.
The movie commented on four types of deficits: the U.S. budget deficit, the U.S. trade deficit with other nations, the U.S. deficit of personal savings and a deficit of leadership in addressing these problems.




Detroit’s Education Emergency



Bob DeVries:

The state of Michigan has had and continues to have significant financial problems. This is why it is baffling to me why the Granholm administration continues to pretend everything is OK in the Detroit public schools system.
Currently, Detroit Public Schools has a $400 million budget deficit. This is due to severe financial mismanagement, corruption, and the fact that families are removing their children from the public schools because of their inability to provide effective education. An attorney representing DPS has admitted that there is reason to believe there was some corruption, citing $46 million that was paid out by one department within the school district that was not apparently used to purchase goods or services. The FBI is currently investigating this and other allegations of corruption.
I think that it’s about time that we declare an “education emergency.” The purpose of this declaration will have three goals. First, we need to take drastic steps to make sure we are providing effective education to the children of Detroit. Second, Gov. Granholm needs to put DPS into state receivership. This means that the state Department of Education would temporarily appoint a financial manager for DPS who would have the final say on all financial decisions. Finally, we need to root out the corrupt and incompetent administration officials so that this tragedy does not again occur.




Finland’s Lesson: Education



Andres Oppenheimer:

Like many other foreign journalists, I made the obligatory pilgrimage to Helsinki, Finland, to learn how this country has climbed to the top spots in key international rankings measuring economic, political and social success. The answer, I was told, is amazingly simple.
First, the facts. Finland ranks first among 179 countries in Transparency International’s index of the least corrupt nations in the world (the United States is No.20); No.1 in Freedom House’s ranking of the world’s most democratic countries (the U.S. ranks No.15); No.1 in the world in 15-year-old students’ standardized test scores in science (the U.S. ranks No.29), and is among the 10 most competitive economies in the World Economic Forum’s annual competitiveness index (the U.S. topped the list this year).
A small country of 5.3 million, which only two decades ago was by most measures the poorest country in northern Europe, Finland also boasts the headquarters of the world’s biggest cellphone maker — Nokia — and cutting-edge paper and pulp-technology firms.




Online tools let parents peer into their kids’ school day



Alana Semuels:

What’s he eating for lunch? Is she showing up for class? What subjects are they weak in? Software is helping unravel the mystery.
It’s tough sending little Bobby or Suzy back to school. Parents may worry what kinds of teachers their children will encounter, whether they’ll be as smart as their classmates and whether bullies will steal their lunch money.
But technology is helping eliminate some of the guesswork about what happens after kids climb onto the bus. Increasingly common Web programs let parents track lunch-money spending, schoolwork habits and tardiness.
“There’s this black box — a child goes away and comes home, what happened during this time?” said Shelley Pasnik, director of the nonprofit Center for Children and Technology in New York. “Now, new information and communications technology allows for the mystery of what transpires on any given day to unravel.”
The programs, from companies such as Pearson School Systems, Aries Technology Inc. and Horizon Software International, are gaining popularity as more parents demand transparency in schools, Pasnik said.

Successful use of these systems is a wonderful thing for parental involvement. That requires teacher AND parent participation.




US Senator Herb Kohl Supports Merit Pay for Teachers



Pete Selkowe:

Kohl spoke at length about education, especially the failure of the public school system in Milwaukee, “where many neighborhoods are not inhabitable … a problem spread across the country. When we have a large number of people unproductive, who do you think pays for it? We all do.”
In answer to a question about school choice, and what the questioner called the “horrible” academic gap here in Racine, Kohl responded: “Anybody who had the answer would be lauded and sainted.”
He mentioned meeting with New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg and NY School Chancellor Joel Klein, and hearing from them “how important high standards and accountability are. We all know it’s not only the schools that fail; it’s the homes and neighborhoods the kids come out of. I would have very high, very high accountability, and reward good teachers, measure teachers. We need to find a way to pay teachers more, and the better ones more than that, and schools that fail should be closed.”
Kohl related his approach toward education to his firing of the Bucks GM and coach last year. “We were not getting the job done.” Ditto in education. “For too long we’ve not been willing to do enough to get the job done.”




World Class Writing



Michael Shaughnessy:

Over the past few weeks, much has been said by Senator Clinton, Michelle Obama and Senator Obama about “world class education”. Those three words have resounded in all of their speeches of late. I would like to acknowledge some “world class writing” which has recently appeared in The Concord Review, edited by Will Fitzhugh.
Below are the papers, the authors, and the high school with which the student is affiliated or enrolled. We should acknowledge the teachers, and principals of these schools, as well as the parents of these fine “world class writers”.
Congratulations to these fine young scholars on their exemplary research and writing.
Bessemer Process…Pearson W. Miller……Hunter College High School, Manhattan Island, New York.
Soviet- Afghan War…Colin Rhys Hill…….Atlanta International School, Atlanta, Georgia
Silencio!…Ines Melicias Geraldes Cardoso …Frank C. Carlucci American International School of Lisbon
Jews in England…Milo Brendan Barisof…Homescholar, Santa Cruz, California
United States Frigates…Caleb Greinke….Park Hill South High School, Riverside, Missouri
Roxy Stinson….Elizabeth W. Doe….Deerfield Academy, Deerfield, Massachusetts
Mary, Queen of Scots….Elizabeth Pitts….Charlotte Country Day School, Charlotte, North Carolina
Viking Gifts….Elisabeth Rosen….St. Ann’s School, Brooklyn, New York
Hugh Dowding….Connor Rowntree…William Hall High School, West Hartford, Connecticut
Confederate Gold….Steffi Delcourt….Frederica Academy, St. Simons Island, Georgia
Max Weber…Diane (Elly) Brinkley….Dalton School, Manhattan Island, New York
I daresay that social studies, history teachers and even history professors would learn a great deal about a variety of topics by reading these essays.Further, I would hope that these essays would serve as models of excellent scholarship and writing for high school students across America.




“Hole in the Wall” Education Researcher on Kids Teaching Themselves



TED:

In 1999, Sugata Mitra and his colleagues dug a hole in a wall bordering an urban slum in New Delhi, installed an Internet-connected PC, and left it there (with a hidden camera filming the area). What they saw was kids from the slum playing around with the computer and in the process learning how to use it and how to go online, and then teaching each other.
In the following years they replicated the experiment in other parts of India, urban and rural, with similar results, challenging some of the key assumptions of formal education. The “Hole in the Wall” project demonstrates that, even in the absence of any direct input from a teacher, an environment that stimulates curiosity can cause learning through self-instruction and peer-shared knowledge. Mitra, who’s now a professor of educational technology at Newcastle University (UK), calls it “minimally invasive education.”




L.A. elementary school adds a year to keep students on track



Mitchell Landsberg:

Armando Sosa’s elementary school is just a quick scramble up a steep dirt path and over a crosswalk from his home in Ramona Gardens, an Eastside housing project known for its crime and violence. If he’s late, he can hear the school bell from his bedroom.
His mother, Liliana Martinez, loves Murchison Elementary but worries that Armando’s zeal for learning will wither in middle school. She has seen too many children from the projects nose dive in sixth grade and begin gravitating toward the gang life that has devoured the youth of Ramona Gardens for generations.
So, along with other mothers, most of them Mexican immigrants struggling for a foothold in U.S. society, Martinez helped start a movement to keep children at Murchison at least through sixth grade. That is typically the first year of middle school.
Goal achieved.
When the new school year starts Wednesday, about 100 sixth-graders will be staying at Murchison, instead of being bused across the tracks to El Sereno Middle School, where parents and teachers say they face teasing and bullying because they are poor and come from a housing project.




College prep blends with job training



Chris Moran:

Sometimes it’s unclear which of Manuel Santos’ classes are college prep and which are vocational. Last year, he took medical terminology, classified as vocational but heavy on the advanced vocabulary he’ll need if he majors in pre-med in college.
And though the Sweetwater High School senior has taken all the advanced science courses he needs to be admitted to his top college choice, the University of California Berkeley, it may be another vocational course, medical assistant training, that is best preparing him for pre-med.
National City’s Sweetwater High and schools across San Diego County are developing a new brand of education that is a hybrid of college-prep and job training, a series of classes that will equip high school graduates to simultaneously impress employers and university admissions counselors.
New and more sophisticated job-training classes have emerged as a response to calls from industry for a skilled, homegrown work force and the rising awareness of a dropout epidemic among students who don’t find school relevant.




The first day of school meant a host of changes for one district, which had to close two elementary schools last year.



Norman Draper:

The first day of school Tuesday marked a big change for Naomi Wills and her kids: They started out at a bus stop bound for a big, new school.
In past years, the morning routine involved Wills walking son Luke and daughter Larissa the two blocks to Osseo Elementary. Younger daughter Natalie, not yet in school, would tag along. Then, more often than not, Wills would linger and chat with the principal and teachers.
But Osseo Elementary, loved by parents, teachers and kids for its small size, hometown feel, and convenient walking distances, was closed by the cash-strapped Osseo School District last year.
“One of the first things that hit me when we found out the school was closing was that all those years my kindergartner would walk with her older siblings to school, and, now, she won’t get to walk there,” Wills said.




Improving School Leadership



OECD – Directorate for Education:

School leaders in OECD countries are facing challenges with the rising expectations for schools and schooling in a century characterized by technological innovation, migration and globalization. As countries aim to transform their educational systems to prepare all young people with the knowledge and skills needed in this changing world, the roles and expectations for school leaders have changed radically. They are no longer expected to be merely good managers. Effective school leadership is increasingly viewed as key to large-scale education reform and to improved educational outcomes.
With 22 participating countries, this activity aims to support policy development by providing in-depth analyses of different approaches to school leadership. In broad terms, the following key questions are being explored:




Head of the Class: Finding the Right School for Your Child



Ariel Swartley:

For 20 years Sandra Tsing Loh has taken satirical shots at Los Angeles and her own growing pains without making the tiresome error, committed by nonnative observers from Joan Didion to Caitlin Flanagan, of conflating the two. Her aim is generally dead-on; her gun emplacement is even better. We not only can read the Malibu-raised Loh in The Atlantic Monthly, where she’s a contributing editor, on her Los Angeles Times blog, and in comic memoirs like A Year in Van Nuys. We can also hear her on KPCC and see her turn her elegant Chinese German face to Silly Putty in performance pieces.
Whatever the target–eye bags, ethnicity, envy, Christmas–Loh’s a linguistic Muhammad Ali, floating and stinging at a pace that would drive a hummingbird to wing splints. At times her approach has left some of her frailer subjects exhausted along with her audience. With Mother on Fire (Crown, 320 pages, $23), her new memoir expanding on the one-woman show of the same name that debuted in 2005, she’s taken on an issue scary enough to warrant her biggest guns: getting your child an education.
How harrowing, you tax-gouged nonparents may wonder, can this be? In my experience the trauma of a difficult birth is nothing compared with the scars of being polite to a teacher who has forbidden a second grader to look at a book that intrigues her “because it’s too hard.” These don’t fade even after said child has obtained a graduate degree. Schooling, in short, pushes buttons. In Los Angeles, it’s also tied to a full range of inflammatory issues, from immigration to celebrity.

Clusty Search: Sandra Tsing Lo.




Schools use 4-day week to cut costs



Jeremy Hobson @ Marketplace:

One of the states that’s most on-board with the four day school week is Colorado. Mostly because it’s so rural, which means long bus routes.
WENDY DUNAWAY: As of 2007, we had 67 out of 178 districts that are on a four-day week.
That’s Wendy Dunaway with the Colorado Department of Education. She says the districts that have switched are almost all rural and are generally happy with the change.
On a rainy afternoon at a hotel in Colorado Springs, about 25 people gather in a medium-sized conference room. They are parents, teachers and administrators from the Calhan School District, which has been on a four-day schedule since the last energy crisis nearly three decades ago.




School District Consolidation in Pennsylvania



Martha Raffaele & Ramesh Santanam:

Pennsylvania will be shedding a school district by the end of this school year — a significant development even after years of nationwide efforts to nudge and sometimes force school systems to share services or merge.
The merger unfolding between two western Pennsylvania public school systems with sharply declining enrollments is the state’s first district consolidation in at least 20 years, and most notably, its first voluntary one.
Officials say the move will save money and improve educational offerings, yet parents in both districts worry that some losses will accompany any gains. In any case, the consolidation is expected to be closely watched.
The willingness of two school districts to dissolve boundary lines is rare in states where local school board control is sacrosanct and school traditions that define a community are deeply ingrained. In recent years, at least a few states have tried to force mergers, with mixed results.
Yet the marriage of the Center Area and Monaca school districts northwest of Pittsburgh is part of a gradual, ongoing national progression toward fewer districts educating public school students.




Campaign to Keep Schools Under the NYC Mayor’s Thumb



Jennifer Medina & Elissa Gootman:

Close allies of the Bloomberg administration have set up a political organization to campaign for renewal of the landmark state law giving New York City’s mayor control of its public schools, hiring a veteran operative and planning to raise up to $20 million for television advertisements, lobbying and grass-roots organizing.
The group, called Mayoral Accountability for School Success, is officially headed by three well-known and respected city figures, among them a nun lauded for her work with struggling students and a popular Harlem minister. But it is backed by top City Hall and Education Department officials, for whom persuading Albany to extend mayoral control is the No. 1 goal for the school year that starts on Tuesday.
The group filed papers in recent weeks to become designated a 501(c)(4), a nonprofit that can lobby and participate in political campaign activity. The move is the first salvo in the pitched battle expected to unfold between now and the end of June 2009, when the 2002 law giving Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg authority over the nation’s largest school system is set to expire.
Renewal is crucial to Mr. Bloomberg’s legacy, since he has staked his reputation on overhauling the schools and has repeatedly argued that without City Hall at the wheel, the system would be doomed to fail.




Is it really ‘public’ education if voters get no say?



Andrew Coulson:

At 9 a.m. Wednesday, the state Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in a case that will shape the future of education in Florida. At issue are two constitutional amendment questions slated to go before voters in November.
A lawyer for Florida’s teachers union will argue that they should be removed from the ballot; the secretary of state’s lawyer will ask the court to leave them in place, allowing voters to decide these questions. The court should let Floridians have their say.
The first question, Amendment 7, deals with religious discrimination. This amendment would make it illegal to exclude any person or organization from participating in a public program because of religion. It also would allow the state to continue operating programs under which religious organizations can receive funding as long as the purposes and primary effects of those programs are secular (as required by the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution).
The second question, Amendment 9, would require at least 65 percent of school-district operating expenditures to be spent in the classroom rather than on administration. It also would allow legislators to create alternative education programs in addition to the constitutionally required public-school system (though it wouldn’t create any new programs).




“Middle School Madness Blog”



by Unnamed MMSD Educators [RSS]. The blog touches on the “Standards Based Report Card” initiative among a number of other topics.

What about . . . THE 6th GRADE STUDENT READING AT A 2nd GRADE LEVEL?
From the district Curricular Standards:
“These Grade Level Performance Standards describe behaviors typical at the specified grade level. They represent behaviors students generally exhibit as they move from novice to expert in their ability to take control of language processes. It is important to remember, however, that literacy learning may not be sequential and each child has a unique developmental pattern.”
The 6th grade student reading at a 2nd grade level earns a ONE (remember, no zeroes) for the Power Standard of Reading Comprehension. Why? For not meeting the “behaviors typical at the specified grade level ” (6th).
Now, if said student raises her/his reading level to that of a 4th-grade student, guess what. That student still does not meet the 6th grade standard and will still earn a ONE for the Power Standard of Reading Comprehension. Effort and improvement are not taken into consideration in this constricted construct for grading.

via a kind reader email.
Much more on standards based report cards here.