Charter schools play by own rules on the court
Many basketball squads struggle to survive; oversight capability limited
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IDEA Public Charter School junior Ebony Jones says of the struggle her basketball team faces: "We've got to fend for our own selves." (John Mcdonnell/The Washington Post)
Everybody: Watch Discovery's new 'Life' series
Did you ever watch the Discovery Channel’s “Planet Earth,” a series with footage so spectacular that it made cynics I know marvel? Each episode was a great science lesson.
This weekend begins Discovery's terrific follow-up natural history series, “Life,” an 11-part wonder narrated by Oprah Winfrey.
Watch killer whales working as a team to hunt seals in Antarctica. See a star-nosed mole hunt underwater using bubbles to smell its prey. Marvel as millions of fruit bats darken the Zambian sky--a huge colony only recently discovered by scientists. Witness the spatule-tail hummingbird courtship display, filmed in super high-speed.
There is, too, gross stuff kids will like: Giant starfish eating a dead giant Pacific octopus, filmed in time lapse. Polar bears munching on a huge whale carcass.
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Do schools change? Not much.
Tom Loveless is a former California public school teacher who has become one of the nation's most contrarian education scholars, always looking for something to upset us conventional thinkers. Maybe you, like me and most people, believe that most schools can be significantly improved if done the right way. Guess again, says Loveless.
Each year he produces a Report on American Education on behalf of the Brookings Institution's Brown Center on Education Policy, of which he is a senior fellow. He likes to crunch old data in new ways. In thereport he goes back decades in California to see how rare turnaround schools---the much improved campuses that are the goal of the Obama administration and most state governments---really are.
"The statistics are eye-popping and, in a way, depressing," he concluded. Nearly two thirds of the California public schools in the bottom quartile based on average test scores in 1989 (182 schools) were still in that bottom group in 2009. Only four out of 290 schools rose from the bottom to the top quartile during that time.
KIPP, union settle Baltimore dispute
I have been following with great interest the clash between the Knowledge Is Power Program (KIPP), the nation's most successful charter school network, and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), the more innovative of our two national teacher unions. A key point of conflict has been at the KIPP Ujima Village Academy, the highest achieving public middle school in Baltimore.
The AFT local forced the school to cut back the length of its school day and end its Saturday classes because it wasn't paying its teachers an extra 33 percent on top of their regular salaries, as the union said its contract with the city schools demanded. Most KIPP and other charter schools don't have to deal with unions, but Maryland has an unusual provision in its charter law that requires their staffs to be unionized
Rhee showcases new Hardy principal
Correction: Claire Murphy Keller, not Ashley Marsh-Coan, was the Hardy student who compared Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee to Dolores Umbridge.
With a group of parents in full mobilization and the D.C. Council asking questions, Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee is trying to remove any doubt about who will be principal at Hardy Middle School next year. And it isn't Patrick Pope.
She's dispatched William Wilhoyte, her instructional superintendent for middle schools, to set up a series of meetings for principal-designate Dana Nerenberg with staff, students and parents. In a letter to teachers Wednesday morning, Wilhoyte said:
"Mr. Pope, Ms Nerenberg and I have met several times to begin the process of developing a comprehensive and transparent Transition Plan for the remainder of this school year. We want to engage everyone in a thoughtful process that will help us to develop a plan that will minimize interruptions to the remainder of the school year while also offering the greatest opportunity for a smooth and informed transition process."
Wilhoyte set out a series of meetings for Nerenberg, one with Hardy
UMW appoints acting president
Trustees of the University of Mary Washington appointed Richard V. Hurley acting president on Wednesday. He replaces Judy G. Hample, who last month announced her abrupt departure.
Hurley, the school's executive vice president and chief financial officer, will succeed Hample on April 1 and serve through June 30, as the Board of Visitors searches for a new permanent president.
Hample announced her resignation in a closed board meeting last month after two years on the job.
Hample announced her resignation in a closed board meeting last month after two years on the job.
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