School Information System

Recent lawsuit against Camden schools may really be about school vouchers

Laura Waters:

This past Monday, parents of three young Camden City Public Schools students filed a class action complaint with N.J. Education Commissioner Chris Cerf. The parents contend that enrollment in Camden’s bleak public school system constitutes a breach of their children’s constitutional right to a “thorough and efficient public education system.”
Are the parents’ children being denied their constitutional rights? Sure. Twenty-three of Camden’s 26 schools are on the State’s list of our worst schools (the bottom 5 percent). Based on SAT scores, less than 1 percent of Camden High School’s graduates are ready for college. One plaintiff has a twelve-year-old son, Keanu Vargas, who attends 7th grade at Pyne Point Family School. The most recent data from the N.J. DOE (2010-2011) shows that hardly any kids at Pyne Point pass the state standardized tests in language arts and math. Forty-two percent of the student body was suspended during the year.

Dazed & Gifted: At the most elite public high schools, students have access to scientific gear more common at private research universities.

Naomi Schaefer Riley:

As we try to make sure that no child gets left behind, are we keeping others from getting ahead? Or, as Chester Finn and Jessica Hockett put it in “Exam Schools”: “As the country strives to . . . close its wide achievement gaps [and] repair its bad schools . . . is it also challenging its high achieving and highly motivated students?”
This isn’t an easy question to answer. Most high-achieving students are educated in ordinary public schools, often taking the more challenging courses in an honors-track curriculum or Advanced Placement classes. But some are educated in academically selective high schools that require students to score well on tough exams just to get in. According to the criteria chosen by Mr. Finn and Ms. Hockett–principally, that schools be publicly funded and admission competitive–there are 165 such high schools in the U.S., out of 22,568.
These days, when parents seem ever more eager to get their children into Ivy League colleges, competitive high schools may seem uncontroversial–merely an early version of the selectivity that universities routinely practice in their own admissions practices. But during the 1960s and 1970s, exam schools came under attack for their elitism. When the country was trying to desegregate schools and provide more money to low-income districts, schools for the gifted were countercultural–out of step with the egalitarian spirit of the times.

Guerrilla War Over Merit Pay in Michigan

Mike Antonucci:

A 2010 Michigan law requires that public schools “shall implement and maintain a method of compensation for its teachers and school administrators that includes job performance and job accomplishments as a significant factor in determining compensation and additional compensation.” But Michigan Capitol Confidential learned that some districts are showing contempt for the law by awarding their highly effective teachers a bonus of $1 to $3.
The problem is that the districts and their unions couldn’t come to an agreement on a system to implement the law’s provisions, so this is what they dreamed up.

More on the math wars

Scott Jaschick:

The Milgram/Bishop essay that Boaler said has unfairly damaged her reputation is called “A Close Examination of Jo Boaler’s Railside Report,” and appears on Milgram’s Stanford website. (“Railside” refers to one of the schools Boaler studied.) The piece says that Boaler’s claims are “grossly exaggerated,” and yet expresses fear that they could be influential and so need to be rebutted. Under federal privacy protection requirements for work involving schoolchildren, Boaler agreed to keep confidential the schools she studied and, by extension, information about teachers and students. The Milgram/Bishop essay claims to have identified some of those schools and says this is why they were able to challenge her data.
Boaler said — in her essay and in an interview — that this puts her in a bind. She cannot reveal more about the schools without violating confidentiality pledges, even though she is being accused of distorting data. While the essay by Milgram and Bishop looks like a journal article, Boaler notes that it has in fact never been published, in contrast to her work, which has been subjected to peer review in multiple journals and by various funding agencies.
Further, she notes that Milgram’s and Bishop’s accusations were investigated by Stanford when Milgram in 2006 made a formal charge of research misconduct against her, questioning the validity of her data collection. She notes in her new essay that the charges “could have destroyed my career.” Boaler said that her final copy of the initial investigation was deemed confidential by the university, but she provided a copy of the conclusions, which rejected the idea that there had been any misconduct.

Randi Weingarten and Friends Respond to My WSJ Piece

Jay Greene:

I’ve long argued that the teacher unions are hardly better at running their political interests than they are at running schools. They compensate for lousy ideas and poorly made arguments with the brute force of mountains of cash and an army of angry teachers.
My view of the teacher unions was confirmed by their mangled reaction to my piece in the Wall Street Journal noting the trade-offs between the number of teachers we hire and their quality. The boss of the American Federation of Teachers, Randi Weingarten, tweeted her response: “They don’t want to pay teachers comp salaries…”

Florida Scott: Department of Education should change strategic plan

Florida News Service:

Gov. Rick Scott called Tuesday for the State Board of Education to overhaul its strategic plan, inserting himself into the racially-charged debate over how much should be expected of students from different groups.
“The actions taken last week by the State Board of Education in adopting their strategic plan did not clearly articulate our shared commitment to fully close that achievement gap for all students, regardless of race, geography, gender or other circumstance,” Scott said in a statement issued by his office late Tuesday.
Scott contended that all students can perform at grade level, and the state should strive to get rid of the achievement gap between students of different ethnic and racial groups.

Infinite Campus, Infinite Problems

Libby’s Board of Education Blog:

I conducted a (very) informal poll last night on Facebook–out of curiosity I asked my friends how often their teachers used Infinite Campus. The results didn’t shock me-most respondents answered either “half” or “some” of their teachers updated their gradebook regularly. Personally, “half” accurately describes my teachers. For some classes, I consistently know what grade I’m getting because the teachers add assignments often. However, many classes aren’t updated regularly, making it hard for me to know what assignments I’m missing and how to prioritize my time.
Infinite Campus is a six-year old program that the district has continuously struggled to implement. It’s in every school and every teacher has access, but the system isn’t always user friendly for teachers and staff inputting data. I’m pretty sure teachers don’t update because of the clunky interface. In fact, tonight’s Board Meeting confronted an issue with Infinite Campus: not everyone uses it.
Ed Hughes got mad tonight. After a string of public appearances condemning IC, disappointing news that the Infinite Campus developers weren’t flexible about changing and a suggestion that we abandon the Infinite Campus system entirely, Mr. Hughes practically shouted that “we should either require all teachers to be compliant or get some direction from the administration on what we need to change.”

Much more on the Madison School District’s Infinite Campus experience, here.
Libby mentioned “developers weren’t flexible about changing”… There may well be opportunities for improvement. But, Infinite Campus has a large installed base. Why is it working in other Districts, and not Madison? My 18 years in the software business informs me that leadership is critical to successful implementation. It also means that such systems must be mandated. Waiting six years is a disaster, financially and from a credibility perspective.
Nearby Districts such as Verona have managed to implement student information systems. Why can’t Madison? Time to pull the plug if the Administration can’t make it happen.

Groundhog Day: Madison Schools’ Infinite Campus Usage Memorandum

The Madison School District (PDF):

In the spring of 2012 data was collected indicating a wide array of teacher grade book usage on Infinite Campus. Following the distribution of the letter on August 27, 2012 a number of concerns were brought forth regarding the use of grade book. Music and Physical Education teachers at the middle school level have larger class sizes and teach on an alternate day rotation in many cases. Currently, members of Curriculum and Assessment are working with Music and Physical Education teachers to develop a set of guidelines that are practical due to their schedules.
Following the end of the first quarter, November 7, we will gather data and measure the use of teacher grade book. The Assistant Superintendent for Secondary Schools will share the data with building principals to address areas of concern.
………
Across our middle and high schools, a number of you have utilized the Infinite Campus grade book.
Parents,guardians and other youth service providers appreciate the information regarding student progress. This year, the MMSD opened an online student enrollment option for families. The feedback is clear, a high percentage of MMSD families utilize Infinite Campus. The Research and Evaluation Department has analyzed the number of Infinite Campus grade book entries in all of our schools and it is evident to me that we have yet to reach our full implementation by having all teachers using the Infinite Campus grade book and consistently updating student progress. Therefore, it is my expectation that all teachers follow the below guidelines as we enter the 12-13 school year.

Infinite Campus (million$ have been spent) usage issues continue…
A few links:

• June, 2009: Madison School Board OK’s 1 More Year of Infinite Campus, with More Oversite
• February, 2012: Madison School District Infinite Campus Usage Report
• March, 2010: An Update on the Madison School District’s Efforts to Increase Teacher Use of the “Infinite Campus” Student Portal
• Notes and links on Infinite Campus and the Madison School District.
• “Standards based” report cards were introduced just after the District licensed Infinite Campus. Unfortunately, the system did not support this change.
• Groundhog day.

11th Hour: Unsettling News on the Sun Prairie Equalized Values front

sp-eye:

Some potentially troubling news came out late this week.
Final fall equalized values were released (remember, that is the denominator) in the mill rate equation; the proposed tax levy is the numerator. If the denominator is reduced, the mill rate goes up.
We’ve all seen the new construction, so we were all anticipating at the very least a small INCREASE in the equalized values. The City of Sun Prairie was using 1% growth in its estimates. The school district stayed with 0%. It looks like the 0% is at least 1% closer to actual.

Reform Math: When Academic Disagreement Becomes Harassment and Persecution.

Dr Jo Boaler:

Honest academic debate lies at the core of good scholarship. But what happens when, under the guise of academic freedom, people distort the truth in order to promote their position and discredit someone’s evidence? I have suffered serious intellectual persecution for a number of years and decided it is now time to reveal the details.
I am a Stanford University professor and researcher of mathematics education. My research focuses on the most effective learning environments for students learning mathematics and has won awards in both England and the United States. My different studies have shown that students who engage actively in their mathematics learning, rather than simply practicing procedures, achieve at higher levels.
Since joining the faculty of Stanford University in 1998 I have experienced fierce personal and professional attacks from two mathematicians – James Milgram (Stanford, retired) and Wayne Bishop (CSU, Northridge). Milgram and Bishop are opposed to reforms of mathematics teaching and support the continuation of a model in which students learn mathematics without engaging in realistic problems or discussing mathematical methods. They are, of course, entitled to this opinion, and there has been an ongoing, spirited academic debate about mathematics learning for a number of years. But Milgram and Bishop have gone beyond the bounds of reasoned discourse in a campaign to systematically suppress empirical evidence that contradicts their stance. Academic disagreement is an inevitable consequence of academic freedom, and I welcome it. However, responsible disagreement and academic bullying are not the same thing. Milgram and Bishop have engaged in a range of tactics to discredit me and damage my work which I have now decided to make public.

Scott Jaschik has more.

It’s Not Just Writing: Math Needs a Revolution, Too

Barry Garelick, via a kind email

In The Atlantic’s ongoing debate about how to teach writing in schools, Robert Pondiscio wrote an eye-opening piece called “How Self-Expression Damaged My Students.” In it, he tells of how he used modern-day techniques for teaching writing–not teaching rules of grammar or correcting errors but treating the students as little writers and having them write. He notes, however that “good writers don’t just do stuff. They know stuff. … And if this is not explicitly taught, it will rarely develop by osmosis among children who do not grow up in language-rich homes.”
What Pondiscio describes on the writing front has also been happening with mathematics education in K-6 for the past two decades. I first became aware of it over 10 years ago when I saw what passed for math instruction in my daughter’s second grade class. I was concerned that she was not learning her addition and subtraction facts. Other parents we knew had the same concerns. Teachers told them not to worry because kids eventually “get it.”
One teacher tried to explain the new method. “It used to be that if you missed a concept or method in math, then you were lost for the rest of the year. But the way we do it now, kids have a lot of ways to do things, like adding and subtracting, so that math topics from day to day aren’t dependent on kids’ mastering a previous lesson.”
This was my initiation into the world of reform math. It is a world where understanding takes precedence over procedure and process trumps content. In this world, memorization is looked down upon as “rote learning” and thus addition and subtraction facts are not drilled in the classroom–it’s something for students to learn at home. Inefficient methods for adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing are taught in the belief that such methods expose the conceptual underpinning of what is happening during these operations. The standard (and efficient) methods for these operations are delayed sometimes until 4th and 5th grades, when students are deemed ready to learn procedural fluency.

NAACP Sees ‘Soft Bigotry Of Low Expectations’ in FL Race-Based Education Goals

Wynton Hall:

The Florida State Board of Education recently announced that its K-12 academic achievement goals for math and reading will vary depending on a student’s race.
By 2018, the Florida BOE hopes to see the following reading outcomes:
90% of Asian-American students reading at or above grade level
88% of Caucasian students reading at or above grade level
82% of American Indian students reading at or above grade level
81% of Latino students reading at or above grade level
74% of African-American students reading at or above grade level
The goals for grade level proficiency in math show a similar breakdown.
CNN’s LZ Granderson says the differing goals reflect current reality:

The Cost Disease

The Economist:

HEALTH-CARE expenditure in America is growing at a disturbing rate: in 1960 it was just over 5% of GDP, in 2011 almost 18%. By 2105 the number could reach 60%, according to William Baumol of New York University’s Stern School of Business. Incredible? It is simply the result of extrapolating the impact of a phenomenon Mr Baumol has become famous for identifying: “cost disease”. His new book* gives a nuanced diagnosis, offerings both a vision of a high-cost future and a large dose of optimism. The cost disease may be incurable, but it is also survivable–if treated correctly.
To understand the cost disease, start with a simple observation: whatever the economy’s average rate of productivity growth, some industries outpace others. Take car manufacturing. In 1913 Ford introduced assembly lines to move cars between workstations. This allowed workers, and their tools, to stay in one place, which cut the time to build a Model T car from 12 hours to less than two. As output per worker grows in such “progressive” sectors, firms can afford to increase wages.
In some sectors of the economy, however, such productivity gains are much harder to come by–if not impossible. Performing a Mozart quartet takes just as long in 2012 as it did in the late 18th century. Mr Baumol calls industries in which productivity growth is low or even non-existent “stagnant”.

Obama Pell Grants Increase, But Do Students Graduate?

David Hogberg:

President Obama has more than doubled funding for Pell Grants and made them a campaign issue this year. But no data exist showing exactly how many Pell Grant recipients ever graduate from college.
What evidence there is suggests less than half do.
Pell Grants are subsidies the federal government gives to college students of primarily low-income families, although middle-class families are also eligible.
Obama has criticized the budget plan of Mitt Romney’s running mate, Paul Ryan, which reduces funding for Pell Grants.
In turn, Romney has backed away some from Ryan’s plan, saying he’d let Pell Grants grow at the rate of inflation.

How Public Unions Exploit the Ruse of ‘Official Time’

Mallory Factor:

Imagine thousands of government employees reporting to work each morning at their government offices and then doing no government work. They use government workspace, government telephones and government computers, all while working on projects unknown and unidentified to their government employers. They receive hefty taxpayer-funded salaries, promotions, bonuses and benefits, plus generous government pensions when they retire–all without doing any work on behalf of the taxpayer. Instead, they work as paid political operatives for powerful government unions.
Welcome to the common practice of “official time.” Sometimes called “release time,” it’s a mechanism by which the government pays union officials to work on union matters during their government workdays. This mechanism–enshrined in law and contracts–is an enormous subsidy to public-employee unions, who defend it fiercely.
The Office of Personnel Management reports that federal employees spent over three million hours on official time in 2010, costing the taxpayers about $137 million in salary and benefits costs.

Ruth and Lovett Peters Fellowship in Education Policy

The Pioneer Institute:

Pioneer Institute is thrilled to announce the second annual Ruth and Lovett Peters Fellowship, an opportunity for a current or recent graduate student with a passionate interest in education policy and strong entrepreneurial and analytic abilities.
The fellow, who carries the title of Ruth & Lovett Peters Fellow, will develop a broad range of research and public policy skills; he or she will also have an opportunity to devise and complete a “Lead” project, which can consist of research or a practical policy project. The Fellowship will commence in the spring/summer of 2013.
Forge Your Future in Public Policy
Click to download forms:
The Ruth and Lovett Peters Fellowship will commence in the spring/summer of 2013. A Peters Fellow at Pioneer Institute will:

• Enhance leadership skills
• Gain extensive training in research writing and the peer review process
• Apply statistical knowledge to research output
• Publish at least one research paper that may be sponsored by Pioneer
• Develop public speaking experience
• Procure grant-writing experience
• Develop wide-ranging social media communications experience
• Advance presentation skills
• Develop a broad network within the public policy community
• Participate in coordinating a policy event
• Interact with opinion writers
• Learn how to successfully market a research project

The Fellowship may span up to 15 months. During the first six months of the Fellowship, the fellow will receive training and research assistance as well as develop a thorough grounding in think tank and idea marketing. Staff and outside trainers will ensure skill acquisition in research project assistance, op-ed and press release writing, blogging, foundation grant management, event direction, and public speaking.
During the final nine months, the fellow will work on a self-directed “Lead” project and may continue to work out of Pioneer’s office in Boston or, if mutually agreed with Pioneer, work remotely. The “Lead” project, defined and managed by the fellow, can be oriented toward research or practice. Pioneer’s staff will continue to be available for the Fellow’s guidance during this project phase. The Lead project will be compatible with Pioneer’s mission and approved by Pioneer’s
Executive Director prior to this second phase of the fellowship.
The Institute’s education policy priorities are related to charter, vocational, and virtual schools; inter-district public and private school choice; standardized testing and assessments; and teacher quality. Applicants are encouraged to submit proposals for projects as part of the application process.
The Ruth & Lovett Peters Fellowship is available to applicants with Master’s level course completion; preferably those with an MBA, MPA, MPP, other Master’s programs or those currently enrolled in a doctoral program. The Fellow will report to James Stergios, Pioneer’s
Executive Director.
The Fellow will receive a stipend ranging from $45,000 to $56,000, depending on experience and other criteria, for the 15-month period. Doctoral students may be eligible for a higher stipend.
Mandatory Requirements for Application

• Reside in the Boston area during the initial six months of the program.
• Be a recent graduate or currently enrolled in an accredited Masters or PhD program.
• Possess a passion for public policy and goals consistent with Pioneer’s mission.
• Possess solid skills in quantitative analysis, evidenced by graduate-level statistics and methods courses.
• Be a U.S. citizen, have permanent residency, or possess Curricular Practical Training (CPT) authorization.
  Applications and Process

Applications must be submitted and received electronically by November 30, 2012. Selection of the fellow will be determined by a team consisting of both Pioneer Institute staff as well as external professionals.
No application will be considered unless all of the required information is submitted by the deadline. Please e-mail:

• Application form (attached).
• A copy of both undergraduate and graduate transcripts (if selected, an official copy will be requested).
• A recommendation from a faculty member using the form included above.
• An essay (no greater than 600 words) explaining why you chose your current field of study, why your goals are consistent with Pioneer’s mission and how this Fellowship would help you to achieve your goals. We encourage you to also include the nature of projects you would propose for the last nine months of the Fellowship (with an understanding that the projects are subject to refinement).
• If selected to proceed further, an interview will be conducted.

If you have questions about the fellowship, please contact:
Mary Z. Connaughton
Director of Finance and Administration
Pioneer Institute
85 Devonshire Street
Boston, MA 02109
E-mail: mconnaughton@pioneerinstitute.org

How Crack Cocaine Widened the Black-White Education Gap

A new working paper (abstract; PDF) from William N. Evans, Timothy J. Moore, and Craig Garthwaite presents one explanation for the decline in black high-school graduation rates beginning in the 1980s:

We propose the rise of crack cocaine markets as an explanation for the end to the convergence in black-white educational outcomes beginning in the mid-1980s. After constructing a measure to date the arrival of crack markets in cities and states, we show large increases in murder and incarceration rates after these dates. Black high school graduation rates also decline, and we estimate that crack markets accounts for between 40 and 73 percent of the fall in black male high school graduation rates. We argue that the primary mechanism is reduced educational investments in response to decreased returns to schooling.

How did crack cocaine depress schooling returns? “Crack markets had three primary impacts on young black males: an increased probability of being murdered, an increased risk of incarceration, and a potential source of income,” explain the authors. “Each limits the benefits of education.” In other words, high school looks less attractive when you’re more likely to end up dead or in jail, or earn money.

Brain scans can predict children’s reading ability, Stanford researchers say

Bjorn Carey:

New research from Stanford shows that brain scans can identify the neural differences between these two children, and could one day lead to an early warning system for struggling students.
The researchers scanned the brain anatomy of 39 children once a year for three consecutive years. The students then took standardized tests to gauge their cognitive, language and reading skills.
In each case, the rate of development (measured by fractional anisotropy, or FA) in the white matter regions of the brain, which are associated with reading, accurately predicted their test scores.

How high school students use Facebook to fool college admissions officers

Dave Copeland:

College admissions officers have learned to check applicants’ Facebook profiles, and what they see there can have a negative impact on the students’ chances. Guess what? The kids are a step ahead of them.
Parents, teachers and guidance counselors warn high school students that what they post on Facebook could hurt their chances of getting into college. And according to a Kaplan survey of college admissions officials released last week, it’s not an idle threat: More than one in four respondents said they check Google and Facebook for information on applicants, up from one in 10 when Kaplan started tracking the trend in 2008.

Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Disruption?

Jonathan Marks:

As a politics professor, I feel I should know something about health policy, but it is mostly dread that made me sign up for Ezekiel Emanuel’s class, Health Policy and the Affordable Care Act, through Coursera. Word is that higher education is about to be disrupted by online providers, like Coursera and Udacity, and their MOOCs (massive open online courses). If students can take political philosophy with Harvard’s Michael Sandel for free, why will they pay to take it with me?
Have you seen Professor Sandel’s course? I bet I am not alone in wanting to take his more than I want to take mine. Sebastian Thrun, co-founder of Udacity, predicts that in 50 years there will be no more than 10 higher education institutions. Thrun isn’t quietly waiting for his prediction to pan out, either. Pearson VUE recently contracted to administer proctored final exams for some of Udacity’s courses, an important step toward offering credit that most colleges will find hard to reject.

What does the cost disease imply about the public sector?

Tyler Cowen:

Matt Yglesias has a good post on the recent Steven Pearlstein column. Here is Matt:
…people need to start paying much more attention to questions of tax efficiency. It’s overwhelmingly likely that we’re going to want the public sector to be a larger share of the economy in 10, 20, 30, 40 years than it is today and we need to find relatively growth-friendly ways to make that happen.
Here is Pearlstein:
From a political perspective, Baumol’s most important insight is that government spending must grow as a percentage of the economy. Most of the services that are provided by, or financed by government — health care, education, criminal justice, national security, diplomacy, industry regulation, scientific research — are those that suffer most acutely from Baumol’s disease. That’s not because of incompetence or self-interest on the part of public servants or even the socialist instincts of Democratic politicians — it’s in the nature of those activities.

German Celebrity Chef on School Meals ‘Many People Don’t Care Enough about Nutrition’

der Spiegel:

A recent outbreak of illness among German schoolchildren has highlighted the questionable quality of meals served in schools. German TV chef Cornelia Poletto says that one way to improve nutrition is to get parents involved in preparing lunches — and to teach children what they are eating.
Cornelia Poletto, 41, is a well-known German chef and the mother of a 10-year-old daughter. She owns a restaurant and specialty food shop in Hamburg and appears regularly as a professional chef on television.
SPIEGEL: Ms. Poletto, you have tested many school cafeterias. What experiences have you had in doing so?
Poletto: Very different ones! But I can say this: It is only in places where parents actively volunteer that truly good food is provided.

Priorities and Judgment Calls: A Collective Bargaining Recap

Madison School Board Member Ed Hughes

The other major change to the CBA affects the hiring process for teachers. Currently, teachers have the opportunity to seek to transfer to vacant positions at other schools until four weeks prior to the start of the school year. Once the internal transfer process has been completed, principals can select applicants for teaching positions from outside the district. It is pretty obvious that the school district was placing itself at a competitive disadvantage in hiring if it could not tell a potential new hire where he or she would be teaching until a month before school starts.
According to the new procedure that is now set forth in the CBA, teachers who find themselves surplused will be placed in new positions by the school district by May 1 of each year. Then vacant positions will be posted for internal transfers. While a change was proposed in the district’s initial bargaining proposal, the final agreement retains the requirement that principals must select an internal transfer applicant if any applicants for a vacant position possess the minimum qualifications. The internal transfer process closes on June 15 and at that point principals can choose external candidates for any positions that remain unfilled. This change represents a big step toward a hiring process that maximizes our chances to hire the kind of skilled and diverse applicants we are looking for.
As I mention above, the new agreement does not address wages. At this point we don’t have sufficient information to make any sort of decision about raising salaries for the 2013-14 school year. Most importantly, we have no idea what the governor and new legislature will do about revenue limits for the next biennium and so we don’t know whether we will be able to increase our spending and by how much, or whether we will have to cut our per-pupil spending, as was the case for the first year of the current biennium.

Much more on the Madison School District’s rather unique action, here.

Assessing the Quality of an Elementary School

Bill Jackson, via a kind reader’s email:

Tomorrow, we’ll talk about my dream school information system – what I’d really like to see out there to power informed school choice.
Before we do that, though, I’d like to share how I would go about assessing the quality of an elementary school if I was choosing one for my daughters today. This is all in the spirit of keepin’ it real. I’d love to hear your ideas.
As the CEO of GreatSchools, I have to start with the data, of course. At GreatSchools.org, I can access data about test scores and student diversity. In some locations, I can also find about special programs, curriculum, extra-curricular activities and transportation options. This is great stuff – it helps get me oriented.

A strong cas for the pursuit of a STEM career

Jeanette Joran:

My job provides me the opportunity to travel a lot. I’ve visited many countries and cities of the world, but I still consider this area home.
I guess a love of math runs in my family. My sister is a math teacher, and it was my favorite subject, too. In fact, you could say she was my first teacher, as she would come home from school and teach me what she had learned that day.
While my math teachers were inspirational to me, there was another teacher who encouraged me to think more broadly and be open to new ideas. The encouragement I received from her helped me to build confidence in my own abilities. Math remained my favorite subject, but I was always interested in new ideas, exploring different concepts

Attention Disorder or Not, Pills to Help in School

Alan Schwarz:

When Dr. Michael Anderson hears about his low-income patients struggling in elementary school, he usually gives them a taste of some powerful medicine: Adderall.
The pills boost focus and impulse control in children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Although A.D.H.D is the diagnosis Dr. Anderson makes, he calls the disorder “made up” and “an excuse” to prescribe the pills to treat what he considers the children’s true ill — poor academic performance in inadequate schools.
“I don’t have a whole lot of choice,” said Dr. Anderson, a pediatrician for many poor families in Cherokee County, north of Atlanta. “We’ve decided as a society that it’s too expensive to modify the kid’s environment. So we have to modify the kid.”

Before a Test, a Poverty of Words

Gina Bellafante Not too long ago, I witnessed a child, about two months shy of 3, welcome the return of some furniture to his family’s apartment with the enthusiastic declaration “Ottoman is back!” The child understood that the stout cylindrical object from which he liked to jump had a name and that its absence had […]

Why does it take so long to learn mathematics

Tony’s Math Blog:

I’m teaching graph theory this year. It was one of my favourite areas of mathematics when I was a student. It contains many gems, ranging from with Euler’s solution to the problem of the seven bridges of Konigsberg to the power of Ramsey’s Theorem. The arguments seem to me to be unusually varied, and often sufficiently elementary that great depth of study is not required.
I have had very little contact with graph theory in the time since I graduated. As an undergraduate I used Robin Wilson’s Introduction to Graph Theory, and I am now using it as the basis of my course. I remember enjoying the book in my youth, and finding it approachable, but I don’t remember finding the material as straightforward as it now seems. (My students aren’t finding it entirely straightforward, either, but that may be my fault.)
Why is this? I don’t think I’m a better mathematician than I was 35 years ago. In terms of solving exam questions, I would not perform as I did when I was twenty. Even with practice, I am sure I could not get back to that level, and not only because I no longer value that kind of cleverness enough to put the effort in. I now have a much better general understanding of mathematics and how it all fits together, but I no longer have the ability to master detail that I once did.

Lunch lady slammed for food that is ‘too good’: The tyrany of one size fits all….

the local/Sweden:

A talented head cook at a school in central Sweden has been told to stop baking fresh bread and to cut back on her wide-ranging veggie buffets because it was unfair that students at other schools didn’t have access to the unusually tasty offerings.
Annika Eriksson, a lunch lady at school in Falun, was told that her cooking is just too good.
Pupils at the school have become accustomed to feasting on newly baked bread and an assortment of 15 vegetables at lunchtime, but now the good times are over.

I’ve seen similar issues in Madison, with respect to extracurricular activities.

No Appetite for Good-for-You School Lunches

Vivian Yee:

Outside Pittsburgh, they are proclaiming a strike, taking to Twitter and Facebook to spread the word. In a village near Milwaukee, hundreds staged a boycott. In a small farming and ranching community in western Kansas, they have produced a parody video. And in Parsippany, N.J., the protest is six days old and counting.
They are high school students, and their complaint is about lunch — healthier, smaller and more expensive than ever.
The Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010, which required public schools to follow new nutritional guidelines this academic year to receive extra federal lunch aid, has created a nationwide version of the age-old parental challenge: persuading children to eat what is good for them.

Inglewood High grad takes over city’s troubled school district

Kurt Streeter:

Kent Taylor, superintendent of education in southern Kern County, was selected Wednesday to lead the Inglewood school district — the first major move by the state after its takeover of the financially troubled district.
Before his Kern County stint, Taylor worked as a teacher, principal, administrator and school board member in several Southern California districts, mostly in the San Bernardino area. He grew up in Inglewood and graduated from Inglewood High in 1982, facts he emphasized repeatedly during a Wednesday news conference.
The appointment is about “coming back to the community that I love, the community that produced me,” he said, recalling several teachers who mentored him as a youngster. “This is a great district, a wonderful district, and we have great things happening here…. Do we need to figure out some fiscal things? Yes, we do. But I’m the guy who is going to come and work with everyone and listen to everyone…. We’re going to continue to move forward.”

The Wall Street Journal:

The unions are blaming Inglewood’s shortfall on education cuts, but per-pupil spending is about the same as it was five years ago. The real problem (other than too generous benefits, which are an issue in most districts) is that enrollment has declined by more than 20% since 2006, which has shrunk the total pot of available money. Many of the city’s working class families have left. Meanwhile, about 10% of students have fled to charter schools–and for that the unions have only themselves to blame.
Seven charters have sprouted up within the last five years as alternatives to Inglewood’s failing schools, which are among the worst in the state. Only 30% of seventh graders meet state math standards while merely a quarter of 11th graders are proficient in English. The charters outperform traditional schools by 100 to 200 points on the state Academic Performance Index (which ranges from 200 to 1000). Most charters also operate at lower cost.
The district intends to float bonds to renovate facilities in order to draw back students, but energy efficient buildings and a spiffy, new athletic center won’t make up for a poor education. And they sure won’t help close the district’s $10 million structural deficit.

Why Long Lectures Are Ineffective

Salman Khan:

In 1996, in a journal called the National Teaching & Learning Forum, two professors from Indiana University — Joan Middendorf and Alan Kalish — described how research on human attention and retention speaks against the value of long lectures. They cited a 1976 study that detailed the ebbs and flows of students’ focus during a typical class period. Breaking the session down minute-by-minute, the study’s authors determined that students needed a three- to five-minute period of settling down, which would be followed by 10 to 18 minutes of optimal focus. Then — no matter how good the teacher or how compelling the subject matter — there would come a lapse. In the vernacular, the students would “lose it.” Attention would eventually return, but in ever briefer packets, falling “to three- or four-minute [spurts] towards the end of a standard lecture,” according to the report. This study focused on college students, and of course it was done before the age of texting and tweeting; presumably, the attention spans of younger people today have become even shorter, or certainly more challenged by distractions.
Middendorf and Kalish also cited a study from 1985 which tested students on their recall of facts contained in a 20-minute presentation. While you might expect that recall of the final section of the presentation would be greatest– the part heard most recently — in fact the result was strikingly opposite. Students remembered far more of what they’d heard at the very beginning of the lecture. By the 15-minute mark, they’d mostly zoned out. Yet these findings — which were quite dramatic, consistent and conclusive, and have never yet been refuted — went largely unapplied in the real world.

Know your history: Both Democrats and Republicans have switched on vouchers

Doug Tuthill:

Long-time Democratic education activist Jack Jennings, in a recent Huffington Post column, argued that Republican support for private school choice is a somewhat recent (i.e., the last 45 years) phenomenon, driven by a political desire to appeal to segregationists and weaken teacher unions. Jennings writes, “The Republicans’ talk about giving parents the right to choose is a politically expedient strategy … Just beneath the surface of the education rhetoric are political motivations to thwart integration, weaken the Democratic coalition, and cripple the teachers’ unions.”
Jennings is being disingenuous by not acknowledging that Democrats have also changed their position on public funding for private school choice over the years. Democrats George McGovern and Hubert Humphrey both ran for president on platforms supporting tuition tax credits for private schools, and Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, D-N.Y., was the U.S. Senate’s leading advocate for giving parents public funding to attend private schools. The Democratic Party reversed its support of public funding for private school choice in the late 1970s – as a political payback to the National Education Association for giving Jimmy Carter its first ever presidential endorsement.

The Plight of Young, Black Men Is Worse Than You Think

Peter Coy:

The U.S. has the highest incarceration rate of any wealthy nation, with about 2.3 million people behind bars at any given moment. (That’s 730 out of 100,000, vs. just 154 for England and Wales.) There are more people in U.S. prisons than are in the country’s active-duty military. That much is well known. What’s less known is that people who are incarcerated are excluded from most surveys by U.S. statistical agencies. Since young, black men are disproportionately likely to be in jail or prison, the exclusion of penal institutions from the statistics makes the jobs situation of young, black men look better than it really is.
That’s the point of a new book, Invisible Men: Mass Incarceration and the Myth of Black Progress, by Becky Pettit, a professor of sociology at the University of Washington. Pettit spoke on Thursday in a telephone press conference.

Related: Robert Francis, the Texan judge closing America’s jails

Until recently, these people would have been discarded in overcrowded prisons. After all they were caught in Texas – the toughest state of a nation that locks up more offenders than any other in the world, with more than one in every 100 adults behind bars. Instead they receive counselling and assistance with housing and employment, although they can be sent back to jail if they fail drug tests, abscond or reoffend. One woman, a crystal meth addict, tells me the sessions in court are like walking on eggshells. But there are small incentives for those doing well, such as $10 gift vouchers or – on the day I visited – barbecue lunch out with Francis. “These people have to believe we care and want them to succeed,” he tells me later. “Once they believe in me they can start to change.”
They are beneficiaries of a revolution in justice sweeping the United States, one with illuminating lessons for Britain. It is a revolt led by hardline conservatives who have declared prison a sign of state failure. They say it is an inefficient use of taxpayers’ money when the same people, often damaged by drink, drugs, mental health problems or chaotic backgrounds, return there again and again.
Remarkably, this revolution was unleashed in “hang ’em high” Texas, which prides itself on its toughness and still holds more executions than other states. But instead of building more prisons and jailing ever more people, Texas is now diverting funds to sophisticated rehabilitation programmes to reduce recidivism. Money has been poured into probation, parole and specialist services for addicts, the mentally ill, women and veterans. And it has worked: figures show even violent crime dropping at more than twice the national average, while cutting costs and reducing prison populations.

Much more on the proposed Madison Preparatory IB charter school, here.

When Curious Parents See Math Grades in Real Time

Sue Shellenbarger:

John Patriarche in Chandler, Ariz., logs on from home to check grades and assignments with his 13-year-old daughter, Anna.
Ever since her 12-year-old twin sons went back to school in August, Catherine Durkin Robinson has been telling herself, “Steer clear. Think first, and keep away,” she says.
The hazard she’s avoiding? Logging on to her school’s online grade-reporting system to see how her boys are doing. When she checked their grades online late last year, “I saw Cs and I almost lost my mind,” she says. Her sons’ teachers later explained that the grades weren’t up-to-date and that Zachary and Jacob were actually doing very well. But it was a shock she’d rather not repeat, says the Tampa, Fla.-based manager for a nonprofit education organization.

What Obama and Romney say about education: Not much

Karin Klein:

It’s hard to guess whether the topic of education will come up in this week’s presidential debate, or any of the others. With the economy and the whole 47% debacle on everybody’s mind, there hasn’t been much talk about the public schools, even though they’re at a critical juncture.
Of course, President Obama’s views are pretty clear because he’s been putting them into policy for the last few years. And in ways, those policies have been problematic. He’s obviously a big believer in giving the federal government a major role in education, which has traditionally been left to state and local governments in this country.
There are policies he can’t legally force on states, such as a common curriculum and rules about how they have to evaluate teachers. (He and Education Secretary Arne Duncan are insistent that scores on standardized tests have to be a “significant” part of teacher evaluations; it’s not bad policy to include them in some way, but there’s a real lack of research to show that they are absolutely key to rating teachers or will improve learning significantly.) So what the administration has done is twist states’ arms by making funding via such programs as Race to the Top conditional on meeting its vision of what education should look like, or, more recently, allowing waivers to states from the more onerous and nonsensical elements of the No Child Left Behind Act if they go along.

Hybrids of History Teaching

Larry Cuban:

One answer looks at how external testing, state academic standards, federal accountability regulations, teacher certification, and the unofficial national curriculum of Advanced Placement influence what teachers present. These largely unnoticed structures in the policy landscape set the boundaries within which teachers teach. To answer the above question on why teachers tilt toward “traditional” teaching, then, I also want to identify other factors that often go unmentioned by those eager to improve the teaching of history in K-12 schools.
Consider that cultural beliefs about the function of public schools to socialize children and youth into the dominant civic and social values (e.g., honesty, respect for others’ values, cooperating) are anchored in age-graded school structures. They become a powerful organizational mechanism for carrying out societal expectations (i.e., kindergarten prepares children for the first grade, a high school diploma is essential to going to college or getting a decent job). Teachers operating separately in their classrooms move 25 to 30-plus students through a 700-page history text, and give frequent tests to see whether students have learned the required knowledge and skills.

Can Academic Standards Boost Literacy and Close the Achievement Gap?

Isabel Sawhill & Ron Haskins:

Abstract: Good jobs in the nation’s twenty-first-century economy require advanced literacy skills such as categorizing, evaluating, and drawing conclusions from written texts. The adoption of the Common Core State Standards by nearly all the states, combined with tough literacy assessments that are now in the offing, will soon reveal that literacy skills of average students fall below international standards and that the gap in literacy skills between students from advantaged and disadvantaged families is huge. The authors offer a plan to help states develop and test programs that improve the quality of teaching, especially in high-poverty schools, and thereby both improve the literacy skills of average students and narrow the literacy gap.
U.S. schools are struggling to enable students, espe­cially those from poor families, to attain the advanced literacy skills required by the twenty-first-century American economy. One approach to enhancing schools’ efficacy in this area is improved educational standards. Standards are routine in American life. Sports have them; businesses have them; profes­sions have them. Standards are useful in clarifying the knowledge, skills, and competencies that society expects from individuals and organizations. Society also needs a way to determine whether the standards have been met, usually through testing, certification, licensing, or inspection systems. And a respected body of experts must be responsible for maintaining the integrity of the standards.

Streich Remembered as Friend, Scientist

Melanie Guzman, via a kind reader’s email

Philip V. Streich ’13, a Harvard student known for his exceptionally broad range of enthusiastic commitments, died in an accident Tuesday on his family’s farm near Platteville, Wis., Leverett House administrators wrote in an email Sunday.
At times an enthusiastic entrepreneur, a scientific prodigy, a political activist, a record producer, and a grandiose party host, Streich carved himself a Gatsby-esque role among the Class of 2013 during its first year at Harvard. Friends said Sunday that he will be remembered not only for his impressive accolades but also for serving as a socially unifying force for his freshman class.
“He was happiest at the center of anything,” said C. Tucker Pforzheimer ’13-’14, one of Streich’s freshman roommates.
At press time, information about the cause of Streich’s death was not available.

Rocklin Unified retaliated against school nurses, judge says

Melody Gutierrez & Diana Lambert:

The Public Employment Relations Board found Rocklin Unified School District retaliated against four nurses and ordered the district to reinstate them with two years of back pay, plus 7 percent interest.
In a ruling released today, Administrative Law Judge Robin Wesley found Rocklin school district violated the Educational Employment Relations Act by laying off nurses Jennifer Hammond, Genevieve Sherman, Susan Firchau and Jennifer Bradley.
“We’ve always been very unhappy with what happened and we feel vindicated,” Hammond said today. “I’m ready and willing to take my job back.”
The Rocklin Teachers Professional Association filed an unfair practice charge against the school district in 2010, alleging the four nurses were laid off in retaliation for asking their union for assistance regarding workload and safety issues.

The Pedagogical Agenda of Common Core Math Standards

Barry Garelick, via a kind email:

Mathematics education in the United States is at a pivotal moment. At this time, forty-five states and the District of Columbia have adopted the Common Core standards, a set of uniform benchmarks for math and reading. Thirty-two states and the district have been granted waivers from important parts of the Bush-era No Child Left Behind law. As part of the agreement in being granted a waiver, those states have agreed to implement Common Core. States have been led to believe that adoption of such standards will improve mathematics and English-language education in our public schools.
My fear (as well as that of many of my colleagues) is that implementation of the Common Core math standards may actually make things worse. The final math standards released in June, 2010 appear to some as if they are thorough and rigorous. Although they have the “look and feel” of math standards, their adoption in my opinion will not only continue the status quo in this country, but will be a mandate for reform math — a method of teaching math that eschews memorization, favors group work and student-centered learning, puts the teacher in the role of “guide” rather than “teacher” and insists on students being able to explain the reasons why procedures and methods work for procedures and methods that they may not be able to perform.

How much is that rowdy kid interfering with your child’s learning?

Daniel Willingham Anyone who has spent much time in classrooms has the sense that just a couple of disorderly kids can really disrupt learning for everyone. These kids distract the other students, and the teacher must allocate a disproportionate amount of attention to them to keep them on task. Obvious though this point seems, there […]

Charges of Bias in Admission Test Policy at Eight Elite Public High Schools

Al Baker, via a kind reader’s email:

A coalition of educational and civil rights groups filed a federal complaint on Thursday saying that black and Hispanic students were disproportionately excluded from New York City’s most selective high schools because of a single-test admittance policy they say is racially discriminatory.
The complaint, filed with the United States Education Department, seeks to have the policy found in violation of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and to change admissions procedures “to something that is nondiscriminatory and fair to all students,” said Damon T. Hewitt, a lawyer with the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, one of the groups that filed the complaint.
At issue is the Specialized High School Admissions Test, which is the sole criterion for admission to eight specialized schools that, even in the view of city officials, have been troubled by racial demographics that are out of balance.
Although 70 percent of the city’s public school students are black and Hispanic, a far smaller percentage have scored high enough to receive offers from one of the schools. According to the complaint, 733 of the 12,525 black and Hispanic students who took the exam were offered seats this year. For whites, 1,253 of the 4,101 test takers were offered seats. Of 7,119 Asian students who took the test, 2,490 were offered seats. At Stuyvesant High School, the most sought-after school, 19 blacks were offered seats in a freshman class of 967.

On School Tax & Spending

Matt Miller

In 2011, Chicago’s public schools spent $7,946 per pupil for instructional (that is, classroom) purposes; the New Trier school district, a short ride up the road, spent $12,043, or 51 percent more. In a class of 25 kids, that’s a difference of more than $102,000. This explains why starting and maximum salaries for teachers in New Trier are much higher than in Chicago; and why the average teacher salary in New Trier is $103,000 compared with Chicago’s $71,000. (These figures are from the Center for Tax and Budget Accountability in Chicago, which tracks fiscal- equity trends.)
The point? When suburban schools pay better, have much nicer facilities and working conditions, and are filled with kids who are easier to teach (because they don’t have the many problems that come with poverty), it is no surprise that, over time, the best teachers gravitate to the best suburban schools. We are relying on the “missionary plan” to staff schools in poor neighborhoods.
The local property-tax basis of much school finance means wealthier communities can tax themselves at lower rates and still generate far more spending per pupil. New Trier has 7.5 times the property wealth per pupil that Chicago has, taxes its residents’ property at roughly half Chicago’s rate, and generates vastly more dollars per pupil.

Mr. Miller compares Chicago’s “instructional” spending, which is only a portion of spending. Chicago plans to spend $5,162,000,000 during the 2012-2013 school year for 404,151 students or $12,772/student. Madison will spend $15,132 per student during the same school year.

Researching the Research

Steve Peha:

The phrase “research-based”, or some variant thereof, appears more than 100 times in the language of No Child Left Behind. Grounding educational practice in solid science was, and still is, an important goal. But, as most people know, finding your way through the research landscape of teaching and learning isn’t exactly a walk in the park. That’s why “When Can You Trust the Experts?” is such an important book.
Written by Daniel Willingham, cognitive scientist and professor of psychology at the University of Virginia, this informative and accessible book is a must-read for anyone trying to understand what works, what doesn’t, and whether or not good science is being used to support such judgments.

Emanuel’s push for more Chicago charter schools is in full swing: Now that the teachers strike is over, mayor is free to expand charter schools in Chicago

Jeff Coen, David Heinzmann and John Chase:

Chicago Public Schools officials expect about 53,000 of the district’s roughly 400,000 students will attend charter schools this year, and the number of charters will increase to more than 100. The city is aiming to add 60 charter schools in the next five years with support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which is trying to expand charters across the country.
The biggest push for charter schools locally comes from some of the wealthiest backers of Emanuel, including Bruce Rauner, a venture capitalist who regularly advises the mayor. At a seminar of business and political leaders held the same day teachers voted to return to school, Rauner said the strike would only energize reform efforts that he called a “multiyear revolution.”
“I think we’re going to have a coalescing of interests that’s a focus and drive some major change. And there are some plans in the works, some charter community education innovators who are now focusing on Chicago, and I think in the coming years we can innovate,” he said.
Experts called the union’s stand against privately run networks unique in the United States, where several big cities, including New York, also have pushed charter schools.
“What’s different is this is really the first mass movement against that comprehensive strategy” for privatization, said Janelle Scott, an associate professor at the University of California at Berkeley who studies school policy.

Related:

• “Presumptions of invalidity”: Closing the Window on Charters in Madison?.

• Charter Caps, Laser Pointers and SuperPACs
• Milwaukee is wisely embracing charter schools.
• 60% to 42%: Madison School District’s Reading Recovery Effectiveness Lags “National Average”: Administration seeks to continue its use.
• Notes and links on the proposed Madison Preparatory Academy – rejected by the Madison School Board.
• Ripon Superintendent Richard Zimman in a 2009 speech to the Madison Rotary Club:
  

  “Beware of legacy practices (most of what we do every day is the maintenance of the status quo), @12:40 minutes into the talk – the very public institutions intended for student learning has become focused instead on adult employment. I say that as an employee. Adult practices and attitudes have become embedded in organizational culture governed by strict regulations and union contracts that dictate most of what occurs inside schools today. Any impetus to change direction or structure is met with swift and stiff resistance. It’s as if we are stuck in a time warp keeping a 19th century school model on life support in an attempt to meet 21st century demands.” Zimman went on to discuss the Wisconsin DPI’s vigorous enforcement of teacher licensing practices and provided some unfortunate math & science teacher examples (including the “impossibility” of meeting the demand for such teachers (about 14 minutes)). He further cited exploding teacher salary, benefit and retiree costs eating instructional dollars (“Similar to GM”; “worry” about the children given this situation).

Charter Caps, Laser Pointers and SuperPACs

Mike Antonucci:

Here’s a partial list of proposed business items currently under review by the board of directors and various committees of the California Teachers Association:
* That CTA amend the first paragraph on charter schools to read “CTA believes the role of charter schools is to provide students, parents and CTA members with educational opportunities that supplement not supplant public school offerings.”
Rationale: Current language does not deal with the reality that charter school growth is often negatively impacting school districts’ programs and forcing our members to become subject to reduction in force.
* That CTA amend by addition to policy on charter schools the following first paragraph: “CTA believes in a cap on charter schools that does not exceed 10% of school districts’ enrollment.”

Chris Whittle Interview

I recently spoke with Chris regarding his interest and activism in the education world.
I was particularly interested in his views on the glacial pace of change in our largely monolithic education system, his education reform”scorecard”, the Edison Project (now EdisonLearning) and Chris’s latest creation: Avenues “The World School”.
Whittle’s voice of experience on the glacial pace of education reform is one of the most astute observations I’ve heard, one that is molded by an entrepreneur.
The interview is available as an 45mb mp3 audio file, or via this transcript.
I am thankful for his time and wish Chris and Avenues the best.

The University of California backs a tax hike to support its ever-expanding bureaucracy

Heather Mac Donald:

The University of California, San Diego has done it again. Last year, it announced the creation of a new diversity sinecure: a vice chancellor for equity, diversity, and inclusion. Campus leaders established this post even as state budget cuts resulted in the loss of star scientists to competing universities, as humanities classes and degree programs were eliminated to save money, and as tuition continued its nearly 75 percent, five-year rise. The new vice chancellorship was wildly redundant with UCSD’s already-existing diversity infrastructure. As the campus itself acknowledges: “UC San Diego currently has many active diversity programs and initiatives.” No kidding. A partial list of those “active diversity programs and initiatives” may be accessed here.
Now UCSD has filled the position and announced the new vice chancellor’s salary. Linda Greene, a diversity bureaucrat and law professor from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, will pull in $250,000 a year in regular salary, but that’s just the beginning: she’ll receive both a relocation allowance of $60,000 and 100 percent reimbursement of all moving expenses, a temporary housing allowance of $13,500, two fully paid house-hunting trips for two to the San Diego area, and reimbursement for all business visits to the campus before her start date in January 2013. (By comparison, an internationally known expert in opto-electronics in UCSD’s engineering school, whose recent work has focused on cancer nanotechnology, received a little over $150,000 in salary from UCSD in 2011, according to state databases.) The UCSD press office did not respond to a request for the amount the university paid the “women-owned executive search firm with a diverse consulting team” it used to find Greene.

“Presumptions of invalidity” Closing the Window on Charters in Madison?

The Madison School Board recently discussed (first 15 minutes of this video) a new “charter school policy” drafted by Julie Mead, a UW-Madison School of Education Professor in the Department of Educational Leadership & Policy Analysis.
The following documents are worth reviewing:
“Using Charter School Education and Policy to Advance Equal Educational Opportunity” by Julie Mead and Preston Green [3MB PDF pages 12-44].
“Model Policy Language for Charter School Equity” by Julie Mead and Preston Green [3MB PDF pages 45-52].
Page 13 of this slide based 1.9MB PDF includes:

Rebuttable Presumptions of Invalidity
A. [A] proposed charter school that is unlikely to attract a student body whose composition of racial and ethnic minorities, students with disabilities, students with limited English proficiency, and students from low-income families that is within 10% of the population for each of these sub-groups within the community or communities intended to be served by the charter school is presumed to be invalid;
B. The applicant can overcome this presumption by providing clear and convincing evidence that the charter school will satisfy the policy goal of providing equal educational opportunity for all students; and
C. Evidence of the support of parents for the proposed school approach may be considered but shall not be the primary evidence that the school positively serves the public’s interests and is therefore insufficient by itself to overcome this presumption of invalidity.

Related: Professor Mead along with School of Education Dean Julie Underwood published this paper: A smart ALEC threatens public education.
Via a kind reader.

Big difference in price of book lists at many Hong Kong schools

Wong Yat-hei:

A survey on textbooks showed a huge gap in prices between different schools’ book lists. The school with the least expensive book list for Primary One charges only HK$509, while the most expensive list costs more than six times as much, at HK$3,089.
The council said the big difference was due to the number of books that schools want students to buy. Some ask students to only buy books for Chinese, English, maths and liberal studies, while others also ask students to buy books for computer studies, music, Putonghua and religious studies, and exercise and story books. The Education Bureau said it was concerned about the difference in prices and it would continue to monitor the amounts spent at different schools.
The price for primary textbooks has gone up by 2.2 per cent, and secondary school book prices are up 2.5 per cent. The average cost for secondary textbooks this school year is HK$2,186. The increase is greatest in Forms One, Two and Five. Book costs rose for all forms except for Form Six which saw their costs drop 2 per cent. The council says this decrease was due to the fact that sixth-formers used the fewest textbooks.

Teacher garners public sympathy after writing ‘seditious’ essays

Verna Yu:

If not for his heart attack in 2005, Chen Pingfu would still be a maths teacher, leading an ordinary life in Lanzhou, Gansu province.
That misfortune was followed by several more. Having no medical insurance from the state or his college, the 55-year-old fell into debt paying for his operation. Then he lost his job when his state factory-affiliated college closed in 2008.
Without an income, he turned to playing violin on the street for money – an act regarded as begging on the mainland. Police and officials would rough him up. But the experience opened Chen’s eyes to how people at the bottom of society are often abused.

Are ADHD Medications Overprescribed?

The Wall Street Journal:

In recent years, the number of children in the U.S. being treated with prescription medication for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder has grown dramatically.
That trend has led to concern among some doctors, parents and child advocates that many children are taking ADHD medication unnecessarily.
These critics suggest that in many cases ADHD is a mistaken diagnosis for children who are simply immature or undisciplined. And even when the diagnosis is correct, they say, many children who are taking medication for ADHD could do as well or better with alternative treatments, including dietary and behavioral therapies, that have fewer side effects.

Can the Chicago Teachers’ Strike Fix Democratic Education Reform?

Richard Kahlenberg:

In 1960, when Albert Shanker and other members of New York City’s teachers union sought collective bargaining rights, they set a strike date for Monday November 7, the day prior to the presidential election between John Kennedy and Richard Nixon. The timing would provide maximum leverage, they reasoned, because the Democratic mayor, Robert Wagner, would not want to come down hard on striking teachers the day before the election. This strategy was vindicated when teachers won an agreement that led to bargaining rights after just a single day on strike.
The same logic surely crossed the mind of the shrewd president of the Chicago Teachers Union, Karen Lewis, who knew that calling a strike this week would be highly disruptive to President Barack Obama’s reelection campaign. At a time when Obama is trying to rally his base, the strike reminded teachers across the country of his support for merit pay and nonunion charter schools–policies also backed by Obama’s former chief of staff and the current mayor of Chicago, Rahm Emanuel. And at a time when Obama is struggling in the campaign money chase, the strike negotiations have distracted Emanuel from helping the president raise dollars from wealthy donors. Both factors may help explain why the strike now appears close to settling.
But if the strike has been bad for Democratic presidential politics, it may ultimately be good for Democratic education policy, which for too long has aped right-wing rhetoric in the name of education reform. It can’t hurt to force a leading Democrat like Emanuel to spend a little more time negotiating with actual teachers and a little less time wooing hedge fund managers, many of whom passionately back the education policies that rank-and-file teachers despise.

Why Do Colleges Compete by Becoming More Expensive?

Victor E. Ferrall, Jr.:

It is ceaselessly (and correctly) observed that college tuition has gone through the roof and something must be done to get the cost of higher education under control. In the 10 years between 2000 and 2009, while the median income of American families grew a modest 16 percent, the cost of attending college shot up 63 percent; more than 70 percent for in-state students at public universities. Even during the terrible year 2009, when family income actually fell more than 2 percent, average tuitions rose nearly 4 percent at all institutions; more than 4 percent at public universities. Today, the list price for a student from an average American family to attend a prestige college or university for 7 1/2 months is only slightly less than her family’s entire income in 12 months.
Free marketers champion for-profit universities as the answer. If they are, it is an odd answer: 80 to 90 percent of the for-profits’ income comes from federal tax dollars–$26.5 billion in 2009. Another odd “solution” presently in play is to radically cut state aid for state universities which, of course, forces the universities to increase tuition even faster (and to try to replace in-state students with out-of-staters, for whom tuition is typically two to three times higher).

Rising to the Challenge of College and Career Readiness

ACT:

Nearly every state has adopted the goal of college and career readiness for all students. At the end of 2011, 45 states had adopted the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) in English language arts (ELA) and mathematics,1 with the stated goal to prepare students to “graduate high school able to succeed in entry-level, credit- bearing academic college courses and in workforce training programs” (Common Core State Standards Initiative, 2010a).2 Other states, such as Texas and Virginia, have also focused on aligning their content and performance standards with college and career readiness requirements (Virginia Department of Education, 2010; Texas Education Agency & Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board, 2009).
Not surprisingly, current research shows that many students are not on target to meet college and career readiness requirements. For example, if performance standards for the Common Core State Standards are set at a level comparable to ACT’s College Readiness Benchmarks–consistent with the goal of preparing students for college and careers–the majority of today’s students are not well prepared to meet those standards (ACT, 2010).

How teacher strikes hurt student achievement

Ezra Klein:

Talks between the Chicago Public Schools and the Chicago Teachers Union broke down yesterday, and now the city’s teachers are on strike, just as class was about to start for the 2012-13 school year. Labor will insist that the strikes lead to contracts that attract good teachers who promote student learning in the long-run, while Emanuel notes that the teachers are striking over his proposed evaluation system, which he argues will help achievement going forward. Leaving that debate aside, what does the strike itself mean for students?
Nothing good, the best empirical evidence suggests. Two of the best recent studies on the effects of teacher work stoppages and strikes concern labor disputes in Ontario schools in the late ’90s and early 2000s. One, by the University of Toronto’s Michael Baker, compared how standardized test scores rose between grade 3 and grade 6 for students who lost instructional time because of the Ontario strikes, and for students who were unaffected.

Scholarism’s Joshua Wong embodies anti-national education body’s energy (Hong Kong)

Ada Lee: 15-year-old Joshua Wong Chi-fung, co-founder of the group Scholarism, has come to symbolise the anti-national education movement’s energy. You know Joshua Wong Chi-fung is a busy young man the moment he meets you. With the government headquarters in Admiralty alive with protest action, he walks fast, talks almost too quickly to catch his […]

Chicago Teachers Union on Strike – Administration offered 16% Salary Increase over 4 Years, Charter Schools Unaffected

Noreen S. Ahmed-Ullah, Joel Hood and Kristen Mack:

“This is about as much as we can do,” Vitale said. “There is only so much money in the system.”
The district said it offered teachers a 16 percent pay raise over four years and a host of benefit proposals.
“This is not a small commitment we’re handing out at a time when our fiscal situation is really challenged,” Vitale said.
Lewis said the two sides are close on teacher compensation but the union has serious concerns about the cost of health benefits, the makeup of the teacher evaluation system and job security.

More from
Justin Katz and Daily Kos.

Chicago teachers are officially on strike.We stand with @ctulocal1 because they are fighting for what is best for our students.

— Madison Teachers Inc (@MtiMadison) September 10, 2012

Analysis: Striking Chicago teachers take on national education reform.

Chicago teachers walk picket lines for first time in 25 years.
Update: Madison Teachers’, Inc. [PDF] on the CTU Strike:

MTI Stands with Chicago Teachers
In August, over 90% of the members of the Chicago Teachers’ Union voted for authorization to strike. Our CTU brothers and sisters have long been fighting against the charter school initiatives supported by Democratic Mayor Rahm Emanuel and a Democratic city council. On August 22, several MTI members attended a “Solidarity with CTU” night at SCFL. MTI members made up almost half the room. CTU member Becca Kelly spoke passionately about the injustice, inequity and blatant racism present in Chicago Public School policies and closures. In an interview, Chicago Teachers’ Union President Karen Lewis stated, “Our students deserve smaller class sizes, a robust, well-rounded curriculum, and in-school services that address their social, emotional, intellectual and health needs. They deserve culturally-sensitive non-biased and equitable education, especially students with IEPs, emergent bilingual students and early childhood children. And all of our students deserve professional teachers who are treated as such, fully resourced school buildings and a school system that partners with parents.” This is what the CTU is fighting for.
This past year CTU fought side by side with parents to halt 17 schools closings or “turn arounds” in the city. The parents did secure a meeting with the city council, but all 17 schools were closed. Next year, Kelly shared, there are over 70 Chicago Public Schools identified for “turn around or closing.”
On August 22, the MTI Board voted unanimously to support the resolutions put forth by the CTU. The MTI Board also recommended further fundraising efforts. MTI President Kerry Motoviloff spoke in support of the CTU that evening. She called for MTI members to stand with our CTU brothers and sisters as they stood with us when we called them. Speaking of the anti-worker movement, she said, “This is not a Madison issue. This is not a Chicago issue. This is not a Wisconsin issue. This is not even limited to a union issue. This is a worker issue.” She continued, “Scott Walker, Rahm Emanuel, they cannot define us. They can make things difficult. They can give us hoops to jump thorough. They can try to throw us off our focus to play defense. But the more we control our message, our voice, the more potent our acts become. This is all one fight. We are all one movement. We will win this.” The Chicago Teachers Union has published a booklet and a page of 10 talking points, both can be downloaded in PDF on the CTU website. Members are encouraged to visit it for more details. MTI will keep members abreast of future solidarity actions.

CTU Parent Flyer (PDF) and CTU in the news (PDF).
Stephanie Banchero:

The Chicago battle has pitted Karen Lewis, one of the country’s most vocal labor leaders, against Mr. Emanuel, one of its most prominent mayors and the former White House chief of staff for President Barack Obama. The Democratic mayor has made efforts to overhaul the city’s public education a centerpiece of his administration.
The two sides have been negotiating for months over issues including wages, health-care benefits and job security. The city has offered teachers a 3% pay raise the first year and 2% annual raises for the next three years. The average teacher salary in Chicago is about $70,000.
On Sunday night, city officials and union leaders said the wage issues aren’t the sticking point. Rather, the two sides are at loggerheads over a new teacher-evaluation system and how much of it should be weighted on student test scores, and over job security for teachers laid off from low-performing schools.

Best reformers create optimism, energy as they push strong change

Alan Borsuk:

I probably shouldn’t do this, but I keep thinking about Heidi Ramirez when I should be focusing on Darienne Driver.
Ramirez is gone now after two years as chief academic officer of Milwaukee Public Schools. Driver is freshly arrived as MPS’ chief innovation officer (a new position). The two jobs aren’t exactly the same, but there is reason to juxtapose Ramirez and Driver.
Specifically, when school opened in 2010, Ramirez was a youngish, very smart, change-minded, powerful MPS leader, fresh in from Philadelphia with degrees from Harvard and Stanford. And when school opened in 2012, Driver was a youngish, very smart, change-minded, powerful MPS leader, fresh in from Philadelphia with a lot of work done on a Harvard PhD.
More important, there are lessons from Ramirez’s time in Milwaukee that help frame the challenges Driver faces.

For success in the long run, brain power helps, but what our kids really need to learn is grit

Paul Tough;

We are living through a particularly anxious moment in the history of American parenting. In the nation’s big cities these days, the competition among affluent parents over slots in favored preschools verges on the gladiatorial. A pair of economists from the University of California recently dubbed this contest for early academic achievement the “Rug Rat Race,” and each year, the race seems to be starting earlier and growing more intense.
At the root of this parental anxiety is an idea you might call the cognitive hypothesis. It is the belief, rarely spoken aloud but commonly held nonetheless, that success in the U.S. today depends more than anything else on cognitive skill–the kind of intelligence that gets measured on IQ tests–and that the best way to develop those skills is to practice them as much as possible, beginning as early as possible.
There is something undeniably compelling about the cognitive hypothesis. The world it describes is so reassuringly linear, such a clear case of inputs here leading to outputs there. Fewer books in the home means less reading ability; fewer words spoken by your parents means a smaller vocabulary; more math work sheets for your 3-year-old means better math scores in elementary school. But in the past decade, and especially in the past few years, a disparate group of economists, educators, psychologists and neuroscientists has begun to produce evidence that calls into question many of the assumptions behind the cognitive hypothesis.
What matters most in a child’s development, they say, is not how much information we can stuff into her brain in the first few years of life. What matters, instead, is whether we are able to help her develop a very different set of qualities, a list that includes persistence, self-control, curiosity, conscientiousness, grit and self-confidence. Economists refer to these as noncognitive skills, psychologists call them personality traits, and the rest of us often think of them as character.

I agree wholeheartedly.

Madison Looks To Arlington, VA Schools for Achievement Gap Solutions; Arlington’s Tax Base & Demographics Quite Difference

Madison School District PDF Summary Document:

The 2005 to 2011 Strategic Plan was adopted by the School Board in June 2005. It outlines major objectives for the Arlington Public Schools for the six years covered by the plan. The Strategic Plan process was designed to result in clear direction for the school system that focuses on improved student learning for all students. For each goal of the plan, the School Board has defined specific objectives, indicators, and targets or benchmarks to measure progress over each of the 6 years. This summary provides selected findings from the results presented for 2009-10.

Links:

• Arlington Schools Assessment Reports
• Arlington Schools Strategic Plan
• Arlington Schools Strategic Plan indicators (PDF)
• Arlington will spend $501,433,941 during 2013, for 22,723 students or $22,073 per student during the 2012-2013 school year. Madison plans to spend $15,132/student, or 45% MORE more.
• Arlington County’s median household income of $94,880 dwarf’s Dane County’s $60,519 (Madison’s is even less: $52,550.
• 30% of Arlington’s students receive subsidized meals, substantially lower than Madison’s approximately 49%
• How do Arlington & Madison compare to the world?
  
  
  
• Dane County property taxes highest in state.

I hope the Madison School Board reviews additional Districts. Arlington’s demographics and tax base are substantially different than Madison.

A Reverse Wisconsin: In Michigan, unions try to enshrine union power in the constitution

The Wall Street Journal:

The proposed amendment text would make the “rights” to organize and bargain collectively a constitutional guarantee, and any state law that would “abridge, impair or limit” collective bargaining would be repealed. Last Monday, the Michigan court of appeals ruled that the measure could appear on the ballot, and the state Supreme Court heard arguments on the case Thursday.
In a filing to challenge the ballot measure, Michigan Governor Rick Snyder and Attorney General Bill Schuette say the huge impact of the law can’t possibly be captured in the 100 words of a ballot measure. It is misleading, Mr. Schuette wrote, for unions to “propose an innocuous-sounding constitutional amendment that has the secret effect of wholesale changes in Michigan law.”
The problem is that the amendment language is so broad that the courts could interpret any union-related measure as a violation. It explicitly refers to all current and future laws. In 1997, for instance, Michigan moved new state employees to a defined-contribution pension from a defined-benefit plan. If the amendment passes, unions will challenge the new plan as unconstitutional and it could be invalidated at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars a year.

Clusty Search: Michigan “Protect Our Jobs” Amendment.

Union Money in Elections

Amy Payne:

This election year, millions of Americans will donate to the political candidates and initiatives of their choice at the local, state, and federal levels. But for unionized workers, union dues come out of their paychecks and go to political causes–and they aren’t consulted on where that money will go.
In July, The Wall Street Journal’s Tom McGinty and Brody Mullins published an eye-opening report that “Organized labor spends about four times as much on politics and lobbying as generally thought.”
They broke down the unions’ political spending from 2005 to 2011: $1.1 billion “supporting federal candidates through their political-action committees, which are funded with voluntary contributions, and lobbying Washington, which is a cost borne by the unions’ own coffers.”

Do We Still Segregate Students? Schools around the nation are ‘detracking’ classes, putting kids of all achievement levels in the same room. Does that sabotage higher achievers?

Julie Halpert:

WHEN ERIC WITHERSPOON became superintendent of Evanston Township High School (www site) near Chicago in 2006, he walked into a math class where all the students were black. “A young man leaned over to me and said, ‘This is the dummy class.'”
The kids at Evanston who took honors classes were primarily white; those in the less demanding classes were minority–a pattern repeated, still, almost 60 years after integration, across the nation. All of the Evanston kids had been tracked into their classes based on how they’d performed on a test they took in eighth grade.
Last September, for the first time, most incoming freshmen, ranging from those reading at grade level to those reading far above it, were sitting together in rigorous humanities classes. When I visited, students of all abilities and backgrounds met in small groups to discuss one of the required readings, which include A Raisin in the Sun and The Odyssey. This September, most freshmen will sit side-by-side in biology classes.
Mindy Wallis, the mother of a sophomore at Evanston Township High, agrees. She opposed the decision to detrack, and spearheaded a petition that advocated waiting for the results of a three-year evaluation before making changes that so substantively affected the freshman class. Angela Allyn, whose 14-year-old son just took a freshman humanities class, says her son was hungry to read more than two-thirds of The Odyssey, which was all the class required. He was encouraged by his teachers to read the entire book, but Allyn says the teachers didn’t help him navigate difficult portions during class, so she had to work with him into the late hours of the night. Her son was teased by classmates, she says, for “showing off and using big words,” something she believes wouldn’t have occurred if he’d been grouped with a similar cohort. Detracking, she contends, focuses “on bringing the bottom up–and there’s an assumption that our bright children will take care of themselves.” She acknowledges that because she’s seen as having “white privilege,” despite the fact that she put herself through school and even occasionally had to use soup kitchens to get by, she’s perceived as racist by merely making such a comment.

Adam Gamoran, director of the Wisconsin Center for Education Research, also believes that race is part of the debate: “People who support tracking are more interested in productivity and less concerned about inequality, and people who are critics tend to focus on inequality and don’t spend too much time thinking about productivity.” Gamoran argues that schools that want to keep ability-grouping need to do a better job with the students in the lowest tracks, but he also believes that the most capable students may not always be sufficiently challenged in mixed-ability classes. “There’s no single solution,” he says. “The point is to try to address the limitations of whatever approach is selected.”

Links:

• English 10
• Small Learning Communities
• Evanston will spend $75,200,000 for 2,974 students, or $25,285/student (!) Madison will spend $15,132/student during the 2012-2013 budget year.
• Adam Gamoran notes and links.
• Madison parents’ Talented & Gifted complaint.

Schools That Can Milwaukee September 2012 Update

Abby Andrietsch, via a kind email:

Happy start to the school year! Our team is more excited than ever about the transformational work being done across Milwaukee.
Today, our 24 STCM partner schools serve over 10,000 students. As I hear the “first day” stories from several of our partner schools, I am reminded of all of the work put in by our coaches and school leaders to prepare: I am reminded of the four days of leadership training STCM held with more than 80 leaders from across the city coming together to focus on excellence in their schools; I am reminded of the more than 135 new urban teachers that came together for a STCM training focused on high-impact instructional practices.
The power of this group is real and the momentum is visible – these are the leaders that will change Milwaukee’s education system and prepare our future leaders. The results we have seen in each of the three STCM pathways (described below) are an early indication of what is possible for our city.
While I am more aware of the challenges facing our students, families, teachers, leaders and schools in Milwaukee, I am more hopeful than ever about what I know is possible. However, we can’t do it alone. It takes engagement from city leaders, educators, non-profit partners, business leaders and foundations. Join us in the movement to support quality across Milwaukee.
Warmest regards,
Abby Andrietsch
Executive Director
Schools That Can Milwaukee

Achievement Growth: International and U.S. State Trends in Student Performance; Wisconsin near the bottom….

(Tap or click to view a larger version)

Eric A. Hanushek, Paul E. Peterson & Ludger Woessmann

“The United States’ failure to educate its students leaves them unprepared to compete and threatens the country’s ability to thrive in a global economy.” Such was the dire warning recently issued by a task force sponsored by the Council on Foreign Relations.
Chaired by former New York City schools chancellor Joel I. Klein and former U.S. secretary of state Condoleezza Rice, the task force said that the country “will not be able to keep pace–much less lead–globally unless it moves to fix the problems it has allowed to fester for too long.”
The report’s views are well supported by the available evidence. In a 2010 report, only 6 percent of U.S. students were found to be performing at the advanced level in mathematics, a percentage lower than those attained by 30 other countries.ii Nor is the problem limited to top-performing students.
Only 32 percent of 8th- graders in the United States are proficient in mathematics, placing the United States 32nd when ranked among the participating international jurisdictions. Although these facts are discouraging, the United States has made substantial additional financial commitments to K-12 education and introduced a variety of school reforms.
Have these policies begun to help the United States close the international gap?
Progress was far from uniform across the United States, however. Indeed, the variation across states was about as large as the variation among the countries of the world. Maryland won the gold medal by having the steepest overall growth trend. Coming close behind, Florida won the silver medal and Delaware the bronze. The other seven states that rank among the top-10 improvers, all of which outpaced the United States as a whole, are Massachusetts, Louisiana, South Carolina, New Jersey, Kentucky, Arkansas, and Virginia.
Iowa shows the slowest rate of improvement. The other four states whose gains were clearly less than those of the United States as a whole, ranked from the bottom, are Maine, Oklahoma, Wisconsin, and Nebraska. Note, however, that because of nonparticipation in the early NAEP assessments, we cannot estimate an improvement trend for the 1992-2011 time period for nine states–Alaska, Illinois, Kansas, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, South Dakota, Vermont, and Washington.

Related:

• www.wisconsin2.org
• Education wake-up call is looming.
• Madison MAP Assessment results.
• 60% to 42%: Madison School District’s Reading Recovery …

Education gap in Des Moines metro area ranks 24th lowest in nation, report shows

Donnelle Eller:

The Des Moines metro area ranks 24th nationally for its relatively low gap between worker education and the education required for open jobs, a new report today shows.
The Brookings Institute developed an education gap index, looking at educational attainment and the education required for job openings between January 2006 and February 2012. The group also examined economic factors such as demand for a metro area’s products and housing prices.
The report said the education gap can have a long-term impact on the economy, resulting in “unemployment rates that are two percentage points higher in areas with large education gaps.”

Students Who Stay Awake to Study Do Worse in School the Next Day

Garth Sundem:

Students who average more study hours do better in school. But a study published last week in the journal Child Development shows that students who stay awake to study more than their average — i.e., to cram — up their odds of failing a test or having difficulty understanding instruction the next day.
To allay fears of correlation not implying causation and all the myriad other factors that could confound a study like this (perhaps students who cram are the same students most likely to do poorly in school?), the UCLA researchers Gillen-O’Neil, Huynh, and Fuligni had 535 students keep track of their sleep time, study time and academic problems for 14-day spans in 9th, 10th and 12th grades. The longitudinal data of these student “diaries” allowed the team to ask how individual students performed on days after average sleep/study, compared to the same student’s performance on days after which the student had traded sleep for study.
Interestingly, they found that in 9th grade, there was no penalty for cramming. In 10th grade, staying awake to study started to predict higher next-day hits for the responses “did not understand something taught in class” and “did poorly on a test, quiz, or homework.” And by 12th grade, kids who traded sleep for study showed a marked spike in academic problems the day after cramming.

College trap: Do for-profit schools adequately serve students?

Todd Finkelmeyer:

Sarah Koran was excited about applying for entry into the veterinary technician program at Madison College in 2010 but her application was denied. That meant hopes of starting the popular associate degree program, which often has a waiting list, was likely pushed down the road for two years.
So instead of putting her life on hold, she decided to investigate other options and was thrilled to learn that Globe University in Middleton, which is part of the burgeoning for-profit higher education industry, also offered a vet tech degree — and she could start classes almost immediately.
Although the total cost of that two-year program at Globe (about $51,000) would be more than four times the price she could expect to pay at Madison College (about $12,200), Koran was eligible for $5,500 per year in federal grant aid and figured it was worth it to take out student loans to help pay for the rest.
“They were like, ‘Oh, we know it’s expensive but you’re going to get a great education and a great-paying job,'” says Koran, noting she now realizes vet techs tend to earn between $10 and $15 per hour after first graduating, not exactly big bucks.

Sunshine Review: Madison School District

The good

• 2011-2012 budget information is provided, but previous budgets are not available.
• Budget gap and tax impact options are provided.[1]
• School board members and their individual contact information are listed.[2]
• School board meetings and minutes are posted.[3]
• Administrative officials in differing departments are listed.[4]
• Recent budget information is provided.[5]
• Some information is provided on contracts and employment.[6]
• Audits are posted.[7]
• Recent statewide test results are posted.[8]
• Background check information is briefly reviewed in the employment tasks information.[6]

[edit]The bad
Does not archive past budgets.
No public records information is provided.
[edit]School board
The school board is comprised of a superintendent and “such other officers as the legislature shall direct.” The superintendent is appointed by the state legislature in the same manner as members of the Wisconsin Supreme Court. The superintendent can hold office for 4 years.[9] According to the state constitution the board of education may not prevent a non−union teacher from speaking of a bargaining issue at an open meeting, as was ruled in the U.S. Supreme Court case Madison School District v. Wisconsin Employment Commission.[10]

I support the Sunshine review initiative. However, the last paragraph, regarding the Superintendent, is of course incorrect.

Getting Rid of the College Loan Repo Man

Stephen Burd:

Gregory McNeil, 49, is living out his days at a veterans home in Grand Rapids, Michigan. His room is so cramped he can barely fit his twin bed, dresser, and the computer desk he had to sneak in because it was against regulations. His only income comes from the Social Security disability payments he began receiving last year after undergoing quadruple-bypass heart surgery. These payments go directly to the veterans home, which then gives him $100a month for his expenses. McNeil fears that if he leaves the home, the government will seize a portion of his Social Security to pay off the federal student loan he defaulted on two decades ago. “This veterans home may become my financial prison,” he says. “And this is no way to live.”
McNeil’s fears are well grounded. For years, private collection companies acting under contract with the U.S. Department of Education have hounded him. The government garnisheed his wages for a time, and threatened to sue him. He says he always wanted to repay, but has never had the income he would need. Meanwhile, interest continues to accrue on his debt, and has already tripled the amount he owes.

Where Have All the Good Jobs Gone?

John Schmitt and Janelle Jones:

The U.S. workforce is substantially older and better-educated than it was at the end of the 1970s. The typical worker in 2010 was seven years older than in 1979. In 2010, over one-third of US workers had a four-year college degree or more, up from just one-fifth in 1979. Given that older and better-educated workers generally receive higher pay and better benefits, we would have expected the share of “good jobs” in the economy to have increased in line with improvements in the quality of workforce. Instead, the share of “good jobs” in the U.S. economy has actually fallen. The estimates in this paper, which control for increases in age and education of the population, suggest that relative to 1979 the economy has lost about one-third (28 to 38 percent) of its capacity to generate good jobs. The data show only minor differences between 2007, before the Great Recession began, and 2010, the low point for the labor market. The deterioration in the economy’s ability to generate good jobs reflects long-run changes in the U.S. economy, not short-run factors related to the recession or recent economic policy.

Marketing Pros: Big Brand on Campus

Melissa Korn & Emily Glazer:

Schools are getting the message about messaging.
Elite colleges and universities are still attracting plenty of applicants, but weak job-placement numbers for graduates and heavy student debt loads have put schools on the defensive, forcing them to prove to families and state governments that a degree is worth the investment.
Enter the chief marketing officer. A relatively new academic position, these marketers manage schools’ identities and messaging, a role covering everything from admissions brochures and Twitter feeds to brand management.

Bill Joy coined a very useful phrase years ago: “The quality of a company’s software has an inverse relationship to the amount of money spent on marketing.” I have found this to always be true.

To Train Teachers, a New Lesson Plan

Stephanie Banchero:

Standing before a class of 28, Katie Filippini was losing the battle to teach her third-graders that the “er” in “germ” sounds the same as the “ir” in “dirt.” Ten minutes into the lesson, two boys fought over space on the blue carpet, a girl giggled at the commotion and a boy named Dandre stared out the window.
But Ms. Filippini wasn’t alone that winter day at the Morton School of Excellence. Veteran teacher Mauricia Dantes, Ms. Filippini’s yearlong mentor, quietly suggested having students clap out each sound, knowing that some children learn better with physical activity. Ms. Filippini did so, and Dandre and the other students began paying attention.
Now, as Ms. Filippini embarks on a new school year this week, she is drawing on those small victories as a trainee, confident that she is ready to teach on her own. “Last year gave me the confidence and experience to go into the classroom and control it.”

The science and politics of reading instruction

Mark Liberman:

Just out: Mark Seidenberg, “Politics (of Reading) Makes Strange Bedfellows”, Perspectives on Language and Literacy, Summer 2012. The article’s opening explains the background:
In 2011, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker created the Read to Lead Task Force to develop strategies for improving literacy. Like many states, Wisconsin has a literacy problem: 62% of the eighth grade students scoring at the Basic or Below Basic levels on the 2011 NAEP; large discrepancies between scores on the NAEP and on the state’s homegrown reading assessment; and a failing public school system in the state’s largest city, Milwaukee. The task force was diverse, including Democratic and Republican state legislators, the head of the Department of Public Instruction, classroom teachers, representatives of several advocacy groups, and the governor himself. I was invited to speak at the last of their six meetings. I had serious misgivings about participating. Under the governor’s controversial leadership, collective bargaining rights for teachers and other public service employees were eliminated and massive cuts to public education enacted. As a scientist who has studied reading for many years and followed educational issues closely I decided to use my 10 minutes to speak frankly. What follows is a lightly edited transcript of my remarks.
From the beginning of those remarks:

Much more on Mark Seidenberg, here.

Humanities aren’t a science. Stop treating them like one.

Maria Konnikova:

There’s a certain allure to the elegance of mathematics, the precision of the hard sciences. That much is undeniable. But does the appeal mean that quantitative approaches are always germane? Hardly–and I doubt anyone would argue the contrary. Yet, over and over, with alarming frequency, researchers and scholars have felt the need to take clear-cut, scientific-seeming approaches to disciplines that have, until recent memory, been far from any notions of precise quantifiability. And the trend is an alarming one.
Take, for instance, a recent paper that draws conclusions about the relative likelihood that certain stories are originally based in real-world events by looking at the (very complicated) mathematics of social networks. The researchers first model what the properties of real social networks look like. They then apply that model to certain texts (Beowulf, the Iliad, and Táin Bó Cuailnge, on the mythological end, and Les Misérables, Richard III, the Fellowship of the Ring, and Harry Potter on the fictional end) to see how much the internal social networks of the characters resemble those that exist in real life. And then, based on that resemblance, they conclude which narratives are more likely to have originated in actual history: to wit, Beowulf and the Iliad are more likely reality-based than Shakespeare or Tolkien or–gasp–even that most real-life-like of narratives, Harry Potter. (Táin, on the other hand, isn’t very lifelike at all–but if you remove the six central characters, which you can totally do since they are likely amalgams of real ones, it, too, starts looking historical.)

A Tale of Two Districts: A Teacher Reflects on the Disparities Harming WI Schools

Susan Howe:

For some reason, my family seems to have produced more than its share of teachers. I don’t remember anyone encouraging us or discouraging us, but somehow we ended up with nine teachers in our extended family, including my husband and myself.
For many years, we were proud to be in this profession. Then Scott Walker was elected. Up to that point, I had not realized to what extent public schools across the nation were being undermined and that teachers had become targets. Governor Walker’s election opened my eyes and awakened a political activist. The recall election did not go as we planned and hoped. After much disappointment and discussion, my husband and I realized that the most important cause on which to focus our efforts was supporting strong public schools and emphasizing the benefits they give to all people in the state and nation. This led us to the Opportunity To Learn Campaign.
Through the OTL Campaign, I hope to inform others about the plight of public schools and the inequalities between districts. To that end, here are two stories about teachers in my family, the districts that employ them and how the inequalities in those districts have affected their students.

School reform gets cool

Naomi Schaefer Riley:

Maggie Gyllenhaal, the ultimate hipster actress, stars in “Won’t Back Down,” an education-reform drama that hits theaters next month. When did school choice became cool?
The film is the tale of two parents (one a teacher) who decide to save their own kids and many others by taking over a failing school in a poor Pittsburgh neighborhood.
This follows “Waiting for ‘Superman,'” the 2010 documentary that depicted the fortunes of those desperately competing for a place at a charter school — from the same progressive filmmaker who gave us “An Inconvenient Truth.”

Hardball School Choice Politics in Milwaukee

John Nichols:

The defeat AFC took was so sweeping that the group had to issue a statement Wednesday in which it “reaffirmed its support for legislators and candidates across Wisconsin who favor expanded educational options for families, following disappointing primary results last night.”
Yikes.
AFC, a group funded by billionaire right-wingers from Michigan (former Michigan Republican Party chairwoman Betsy DeVos and her husband, Amway heir Dick DeVos) and their wealthy allies across the country, poured more than $100,000 (perhaps a lot more) into “independent” campaigns on behalf of supporters of school “choice” and “voucher” schemes, which weaken public schools in Milwaukee and pave the way for privatization.
But the AFC candidates lost. Badly.
State Rep. Jason Fields, the Milwaukee Democrat whose re-election was the chief priority of AFC and its Wisconsin operative, former Assembly Speaker Scott Jensen, was defeated by community activist Mandela Barnes.

Related: Ripon Superintendent Richard Zimman’s 2009 speech to the Madison Rotary Club:

Beware of legacy practices (most of what we do every day is the maintenance of the status quo), @12:40 minutes into the talk – the very public institutions intended for student learning has become focused instead on adult employment. I say that as an employee. Adult practices and attitudes have become embedded in organizational culture governed by strict regulations and union contracts that dictate most of what occurs inside schools today. Any impetus to change direction or structure is met with swift and stiff resistance. It’s as if we are stuck in a time warp keeping a 19th century school model on life support in an attempt to meet 21st century demands.” Zimman went on to discuss the Wisconsin DPI’s vigorous enforcement of teacher licensing practices and provided some unfortunate math & science teacher examples (including the “impossibility” of meeting the demand for such teachers (about 14 minutes)). He further cited exploding teacher salary, benefit and retiree costs eating instructional dollars (“Similar to GM”; “worry” about the children given this situation).

60% to 42%: Madison School District’s Reading Recovery Effectiveness Lags “National Average”: Administration seeks to continue its use.

What our schools need? A few good men

William Gormley:

Yet only a fraction of our teachers are the best and the brightest of their generation. According to a 2010 McKinsey report, nearly half of U.S. teachers come from the bottom third of their class.
Here’s a simple idea that could dramatically improve the teaching quality: Hire a few good men.
Despite some inroads by men, teaching remains a female-dominated profession. This is especially true for younger children. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, only 2% of pre-K and kindergarten teachers and 18% of elementary and middle-school teachers are men.
The situation is more balanced, but not evenly balanced, in secondary school, where 42% of teachers are men.

A High-Tech Fix for Broken Schools

Juan Williams:

Mooresville, N.C., is best known as “Race City, U.S.A.,” home of Nascar. But these days Mooresville is leading the nation in a different way–by using digital technology to improve public education.
“Fixing Our Schools,” a documentary I am hosting for the Fox News Channel this Sunday, looks at how digital learning is being used by schools like those in Mooresville to help fix our broken education system.
Our schools are undoubtedly in crisis. Prize-winning documentaries such as “Waiting for ‘Superman'” have revealed the terrible cost of losing young minds to failing schools. Dropout rates are particularly high among minority children in urban schools. But even parents in the best suburban schools are alarmed by the fact that the U.S. now ranks 30th world-wide in math, 23rd in science, and 17th in literacy.

Madison MAP Testing Shows They are Falling Short Too

Melissa Hammann, via a kind reader’s email:

So, the great and powerful Madison School District has started MAP testing and the results are, well, as they should have expected when viewed as a whole. White kids are above national averages and children of color are below them. MAP testing stands for Measures of Academic Progress. They are taken at the computer by each student and the questions are tailored to the individual student. They keep answering questions until they hit the wall of achievement level and the test is ended. Scores are known immediately and areas of strength and areas that need improvement are highlighted FOR EACH KID. It is supposed to be a tool for teachers to use in order to more adequately provide instruction in their classroom. This is called differentiated instruction, or DI in the education vernacular. MAP results are not really effective for national achievement comparison.
OK, I’m going out on a limb here and going to say to the critics of ECSD that we have been doing MAP testing in our district for 5 years now. My newly minted graduate was in the guinea pig group in 7th grade, so I am keyed in on this topic. We can thank Paula Landers for being ahead of the curve on implementing this tool. What seems to escape the writer of the article as well as our district is this. It’s very nice to know how one’s district stacks up as a whole against the state (WKCE) and nation (MAP, NAEP), but what exactly does this data provide in the way of improving individual student achievement? Exactly squat. In this world of inclusive learning, school districts must have tools to provide DI for all levels of learners. If you insist on teaching to some arbitrary mean that various test data indicates as the level of your class, you’ll lose the top 30 and bottom 30 percent of the curve. That’s 60 percent of the students being lost. Used properly, MAP results could be a very effective tool for the teaching arsenal to solve this problem.
Sadly, it is my experience that my kids’ teachers use it to verify what they already know about my kids, that they are above average, and use their MAP data to rationalize being satisfied with mediocre performance the rest of the year “because they are still above their peer average.” I have no data to indicate it is otherwise with other children. In fact, I have spoken to other parents with similar issues. In addition, over 35 percent of the students in the quadrant report that began the school year above their peer group in reading in our district in 10-11 did not reach the achievement goal the MAP test sets for them. It seems that the district thinks it’s OK that a child does not achieve to their potential. I am not of the same opinion.
……
Not only did my kid fail to reach his personal achievement goal set for him by the MAP test (gain less than they projected he should), but he ended 5th grade at a lower achievement level in reading than where he started. This loss of achievement happened while he got straight As all year long in language arts. I began a slow burn that has not stopped. I went to the principal, I went to the teacher and I went to the administrator in charge. “He started out so high that it was hard for him to achieve.” This is an unacceptable response. My child deserves to show some damn achievement after a year of instruction. I don’t care if he started out higher than the mediocre goals you set for the masses. This is thievery, plain and simple. That year, as I recall, the entire grade level failed to meet the 50% level, which basically says they have achieved grade level performance. Interpretation of MAP results is a bit confusing, so go with me here. Anything less than 50% for a grade level indicates they have not achieved a years worth of learning. There has been a shake up in the 5th grade teaching team, but I think it goes beyond individual teachers. If there is an endemic attitude that high achieving students are OK to ignore and an insistence on mistakenly using MAP data to compare to national averages (like the article in the Madison paper did) instead of using it for the amazing tool it could be, there will be no dang improvement in overall achievement.

Related: Madison Schools’ Measures of Academic Progress (MAP) Assessment Results Released. Unfortunately, the Madison School District has not published the school by school MAP results, though the information made its way to Matthew DeFour’s Sunday article.

Disrupting Higher Education: Two Views

David Youngberg:

When I decided to become a professor, I was comforted by its employment projections. Professors hired to teach the baby boomers are retiring: It’ll be a seller’s market. Now I’m told Massive Open Online Courses, or MOOC’s, threaten that rosy future. One person can teach the whole world with a cheap Webcam and an Internet connection. Sebastian Thrun, a Stanford University research professor and co-founder of the MOOC provider Udacity, told Wired that in 50 years there will be only 10 institutions in the whole world that deliver higher education.
I was scared. So in early 2012 I joined 90,000 other students who enrolled in one or both of Udacity’s first two courses. I selected CS101: Building a Search Engine. What with video lectures, online discussion boards, and learning from the field’s top minds, it was easy to believe that online education was the beginning of the end for the ivory tower. But I came to realize that MOOC’s have five fundamental problems.

I believe that Youngberg has taken a somewhat rose colored view of the changes at hand.
I see higher ed disruption playing out as follows (I have a $50 wager with a professor friend that in 20 years, the UW-Madison will have fewer on campus undergraduate students than today, God willing that I live long enough to collect!):
Investment groups will form relationships with certain professors and a few name educational institutions around the world. They will also cut bi-directional deals with business, NGO and Governments. These organizations will invest in the emerging, hybrid higher ed concerns AND, crucially, commit to hiring a fixed number of graduates. The big names will attract a good portion of the “best and brightest” students, offering a more wide-ranging experience than traditional bricks and mortar campuses. The hybrid institutions will provide both online and traditional education experiences along with a direct path to employment.
The synthesis between a number of “name” higher ed institutions, capital and employment will be very difficult to beat. Traditional institutions will need to soon rethink their mission and model. This being said, many new opportunities will arise during the transition.
“Lower ed” will not be exempt from such changes.

Student performance improves when teachers given incentives upfront

University of Chicago News, via a kind Beth Dorhn email: A bonus payment to teachers can improve student academic performance — but only when it is given upfront, on the condition that part of the money must be returned if student performance fails to improve, research at the University of Chicago shows. The study showed […]

High Schools putting kids off IT careers, deepening skills shortage

Simon Sharwood:

High School teaching of IT as a career actually puts kids off pursuing careers in the field, according to John Ridge, Executive Director of the Australian Computer Society Foundation Trust Fund (ACSF).
Ridge says general computer literacy courses in early high school are important and welcome, as employers expect some level of skill with productivity applications when hiring. But once kids start to study IT as a career, he says, they tend to abandon the idea of actually working in the industry.
The reason for the rebound, he says, is that too few teachers have the skills and passion to teach IT well. In New South Wales, Ridge said he feels 100 to 200 IT teachers do well … but with more than 1000 high schools in the State that’s not a great strike rate. Without proper resourcing and relevant curricula – the NSW Higher Schools Certificate’s Software Development and Design course is unchanged since 2009 – Ridge therefore wonders if it is even worth teaching IT as a career in schools.

New Jersey Passes Teacher Tenure Reform

Heather Haddon:

After signing a bill to overhaul teacher tenure rules Monday, Gov. Chris Christie said the changes represented one of his signature political achievements, ranking only behind a successful effort to limit government employees’ pension and benefit costs.
“It’s right behind pension and benefit reform just because the level of skepticism that we would get anything done,” Mr. Christie said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal following a news conference at a middle school here. “There had been such inertia on this topic. I always enjoy defying expectations.”
The new law doesn’t go as far as tenure bills passed in other states in the past year. But it marks a significant shift in the nation’s oldest teacher job-security law, requiring all teachers to undergo annual performance reviews and making it easier to fire poorly performing educators.

Laura Waters:

For Senator Teresa Ruiz, who tirelessly shepherded NJ’s tenure reform bill through the gauntlet of the Senate, the Assembly, union opposition, aggressive reformers, and countless interest groups.
How collegial was the signing yesterday at a Middlesex middle school? Chris Christie sounded practically conciliatory, telling NJ Spotlight that he signed the bill because “my decision was there was enough really good things in this bill that I was not going to allow it not to become law because it didn’t have everything I wanted” and seating arrangements placed B4K’s Derrell Bradford in between NJEA President Barbara Keshishian and AFT President Joseph Del Grosso.

More education jargon and what it really means

Valerie Strauss:

Here are 10 education terms with definitions that tell you what they really mean to people who use them in our national education conversation.
Yesterday I published the first installment of education jargon, written by Joanne Yatvin, a vet­eran public school educator, author and past president of the National Council of Teachers of English. She is now teaching part-time at Portland State University.
Here’s more jargon from Joanne Yatvin:
School Reform Plans: Untested notions for improving public education, many of which have been tried before with negligible results
School Reformers: People with impressive titles who have had little or no practical experience in schools.
Charter Schools: Semi-private schools supported by public funds deemed superior by parents because they appear more elegant and exclusive than public schools.

Common Core Anyone? Anyone?

The totalitarian left has been similarly clear that decision-making power should be confined to a political elite–the “vanguard of the proletariat,” the leader of a “master race,” or whatever the particular phrase that might become the motto of the particular totalitarian system. In Mussolini’s words, “The mass will simply follow and submit.”
Thomas Sowell
Intellectuals and Society
New York: Basic Books, 2011, pp. 104-106
…Reliance on systemic processes, whether in the economy, the law, or other areas, is based on the constrained vision–the tragic vision–of the severe limitations on any given individual’s knowledge and insight, however knowledgeable or brilliant that individual might be, compared to other individuals. Systemic processes which tap vastly more knowledge and experience from vastly more people, often including traditions evolved from the experience of successive generations, are deemed more reliable than the intellect of the intellectuals.
By contrast, the vision of the left is one of surrogate decision-making by those presumed to have not only superior knowledge but sufficient knowledge, whether these surrogates are political leaders, experts, judges or others. This is the vision that is common to varying degrees on the political left, whether radical or moderate, and common also to totalitarians, whether Communist or Fascist. A commonality of purpose in society is central to collective decision-making, whether expressed in town-meeting democracy or totalitarian dictatorship of other variations in between. One of the differences between the commonality of purpose in democratic systems of government and the totalitarian systems of government is in the range of decisions infused with that commonality of purpose and in the range of decisions reserved for individual decision-making outside the purview of government.
The free market, for example, is a huge exemption from government power. In such a market, there is no commonality of purpose, except among such individuals and organizations as may choose voluntarily to coalesce into groups ranging from bowling leagues to multinational corporations. But even these aggregations typically pursue the interests of their own respective constituents and compete against the interests of other aggregations. Those who advocate this mode of social decision-making do so because they believe that the systemic results of such competition are usually better than a society-wide commonality of purpose imposed by surrogate decision-makers superintending the whole process in the name of “the national interest” or of “social justice.”
The totalitarian version of collective surrogate decision-making by government was summarized by Mussolini, who defined “totalitarianism” in the motto: “Everything in the State, nothing outside of the State, nothing against the State.” Moreover, the state ultimately meant the political leader of the state, the dictator. Mussolini was know as Il Duce–the leader–before Hitler acquired the same title in German as the Führer.
Democratic versions of collective surrogate decision-making by government choose leaders by votes and tend to leave more areas outside the purview of government. However, the left seldom has any explicit principle by which the boundaries between government and individual decision-making can be determined, so that the natural tendency over time is for the scope of government decision-making to expand, as more and more decisions are taken successively from private hands, since government officials constantly have incentives to expand their powers while the voters’ attention is not constantly focussed on maintaining limits on those powers.
Preferences for collective, surrogate decision-making from the top down are not all that the democratic left has shared with the original Italian Fascists and with the National Socialists (Nazis) of Germany. In addition to political intervention in economic markets, the democratic left has shared with the Fascists and the Nazis the underlying assumption of a vast gap in understanding between ordinary people and elites like themselves. Although both the totalitarian left–that is, the Fascists, Communists and Nazis–and the democratic left have widely used in a positive sense such terms as “the people,” “the workers” or “the masses,” these are the ostensible beneficiaries of their policies, but not autonomous decision-makers. Although much of the rhetoric on both the democratic left and the totalitarian left has long papered over the distinction between ordinary people as beneficiaries and as decision-makers, it has long been clear in practice that decision-making has been seen as something reserved for the anointed in these visions.
Rousseau, for all his emphasis on “the general will,” left the interpretation of that will to elites. He likened the masses of the people to “a stupid, pusillanimous invalid.” Godwin and Condorcet, also on the eighteenth century left, expressed similar contempt for the masses. Karl Marx said, “The working class is revolutionary or it is nothing”–in other words, millions of human beings mattered only if they carried out his vision. George Bernard Shaw included the working class among the “detestable” people who “have no right to live.” He added: “I should despair if I did not know that they will die presently, and that there is no need on earth why they should be replaced by people like themselves.” As a young man serving the U.S. Army during the First World War, Edmund Wilson wrote to a friend: “I should be insincere to make it appear that the deaths of this ‘poor white trash’ of the South and the rest make me feel half so bitter as the mere conscription or enlistment of any of my friends.”
The totalitarian left has been similarly clear that decision-making power should be confined to a political elite–the “vanguard of the proletariat,” the leader of a “master race,” or whatever the particular phrase that might become the motto of the particular totalitarian system. In Mussolini’s words, “The mass will simply follow and submit.”
—————————
“Teach by Example”
Will Fitzhugh [founder]
The Concord Review [1987]
Ralph Waldo Emerson Prizes [1995]
National Writing Board [1998]
TCR Institute [2002]
730 Boston Post Road, Suite 24
Sudbury, Massachusetts 01776-3371 USA
978-443-0022; 800-331-5007
www.tcr.org; fitzhugh@tcr.org
Varsity Academics®
www.tcr.org/blog

Junking old way of teaching writing

Jay Matthews:

I almost never give advice to teachers. They live their work, while I just observe it and cannot hope to know as much as they do.
But on one subject, writing, I could teach most of them. My learning to put words together was long, painful and instructive. I know what works and what doesn’t.
That’s my excuse for suggesting in my last Local Living column a new kind of high school course. We should suspend the regular English curriculum for a semester and teach “Reading and Writing.” Every student would produce an essay each week and spend time at the teacher’s desk being edited. We would hire or train teachers to do what my first editors did: Cross out cute phrases, ask what I was trying to say, break overlong sentences into pieces, ask for specific examples, replace inactive verbs with active ones, and so on.
A class of 25 meeting five times a week for 50 minutes would allow only 10 minutes of editing a week for each student. But that adds up to 200 minutes of one-on-one editing per student by the end of the semester, a big improvement over what students get now, which often is zero. The usual written comments on graded papers lack the force of these personal exchanges.

Teacher Dress Code

Yasmeen Abutaleb:

The Wichita School District is just one of a growing number in the nation cracking down on teacher apparel. Jeans are banned in at least one elementary school in New York City. A school district in Phoenix is requiring teachers to cover up tattoos and excessive piercings. And several Arizona schools are strictly defining business casual.
In an increasingly diverse nation where what you wear may be the ultimate self-expression, teachers are falling victim to the same dress code rules as their students.
In most cases, schools are taking the actions because they believe some teachers are dressing inappropriately. School board members received parental complaints about teacher dress at Arizona’s Litchfield Elementary School District, Superintendent Julianne Lein says.
The move comes at a time when the number of public schools requiring uniforms has nearly doubled over the past decade to 19%, reports the National Center for Education Statistics. The center doesn’t track teacher uniforms or dress codes. But it soon may have to, as schools have moved to:

Wichita’s 2011-2012 budget was $606,000,000 for 50,103 students ($12,095/student). Madison spent 18.6% more, or $14,858/student during the 2011-2012 budget cycle.