Thursday, April 8, 2010

Education - Everything you need to know about the world of education.

Education - Everything you need to know about the world of education.











Obama ed "blueprint" will widen achievement gaps

My guests are Lisa Guisbond and Monty Neill, of the National Center for Fair and Open Testing, known as FairTest, a non-profit organization that works to end the misuse and flaws of standardized testing.
By Lisa Guisbond and Monty Neill
At a time when the gaps between educational haves and have-nots are as stark as at any time in our nation’s history, President Obama's and Education Secretary Arne Duncan’s blueprint for intervening in our most troubled schools promises to widen these gaps.
The Blueprint fueled hopes for real change by eliminating NCLB’s disastrous adequate yearly progress mechanism. It’s too bad AYP wasn’t killed while the law was being written, when it was first noticed that it would paint nearly all schools as failures. (See FairTest’s 2004 NCLB report on why.) But scrapping it now is better than never.
Duncan aims to correct AYP’s absurdly broad-brush approach by focusing on the 5%-10% of schools doing worst on state tests. This has both common sense and political appeal. Why not get off the backs of schools that are doing pretty well and focus attention on the worst of the worst?
But what are we really talking about when we talk about the worst schools?
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Why I ignore some great schools

[This is my Local Living section column for April 8, 2010.]
Cedric Sheridan, a Prince George’s County parent, worries about the high school where his son is a senior and his daughter is a junior. He told me “I fear that it started on a downward slide a few years ago.” The school is Eleanor Roosevelt High School, one of the highest-performing public schools in the country. It is a model of good teaching and successful racial integration. Why would anyone have any concerns about it?
Sheridan has visited the school often. He knows his children’s teachers are energetic and engaged. But there are always doubts, even about a school like Eleanor Roosevelt with a third of its students (includng the two young Sheridans) handpicked for academic excellence by its magnet Science and Technology Center.
Wasn’t Eleanor Roosevelt dropping on the Challenge Index, my annual ranked list of local high schools based on participation in college-level exams like Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate, he asked. No, I said. In the latest list released in January it had its highest rating ever, 2.460 college level tests per graduating senior. On mynational list in Newsweek this June it will be in the top 2 percent of all U.S. public schools, measured this way. Half of Eleanor Roosevelt seniors last year had at least one passing score on an AP exam, more than three times the national average. Last year's senior class had the highest number of African-American students in the nation with passing scores on the AP English Language, AP Biology and AP Chemistry exams. This year’s Washington Post Agnes Meyer award for the best teacher in the county will go to Kenneth Bernstein of the Eleanor Roosevelt faculty.
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DC Teachers contract settled

Update, 8:47 p.m.:
For details, see the union's Q&A here and highlights here. (Both are pdfs.)
Original post: 
D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee and the Washington Teachers' Union have reached tentative agreement on a new contract, ending more than two years of closely watched and often-rancorous negotiations, union and District officials said Tuesday.
The proposed pact, which must be ratified by union members and approved by the D.C. Council, provides teacher salary increases of more than a 20 percent over five years, with much of it to be paid for through an unusual arrangement with a group of private foundations that have pledged to donate $65 million.
The deal gives Rhee some of the tools she said she needed to raise the quality of teaching and learning in schools long ranked as among the nation's worst, but perhaps more importantly it brings her labor peace as Mayor Adrian M. Fenty he heads into an election-year battle with Council Chairman Vincent Gray and perhaps another candidate. The negotiations also have been viewed as a test of the strength of both union forces and reform advocates pushing for aggressive revamping of the nation's schools.
"It took a lot of courage to get here," Rhee said in an interview. "We really have done something that frames evertything around performance for kids and making that the really core tenet of the agreement."
The changes in the contract include a merit-pay program that will allow teachers to earn annual bonuses for the improvement of student performance on standardized tests and other measures of academic success. The pact, if approved, will also afford Rhee and her school principals more latitude in deciding which teachers to retain in the event 
Ed Buzz: The Nation





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