5/28/2014 – Education Accountability We Can Believe In:

5/28/2014 – Education Accountability We Can Believe In

May 28, 2014 Subscribe

THIS WEEK: Boosting School Funding Erases Graduation Gap … Education’s New Jim Crow … Lawmakers Clueless On Charter Schools … Resistance To Standardized Tests … Costs Of Closing EdTech Gap

TOP STORY

Education Accountability We Can Believe In

By Jeff Bryant

“For years, education policy at nearly every level has been obsessed with an outcomes-only focus – namely, scores on standardized tests – with less and less emphasis placed on the inputs into our children’s schooling … The results have been not only detrimental to children and schools, they haven’t produced much in the way of better outcomes … Surely it’s time for alternatives to this mindless direction, and fortunately, such alternatives are being proposed from multiple sources. But are leaders paying attention?”
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NEWS AND VIEWS

Boosting School Funding 20 Percent Erased The Graduation Gap Between Rich And Poor Students

Vox.com

“Spending more money on educating children in poor districts can dramatically change the trajectory of those children’s lives … Additional money spent educating a child from a poor family made that child more likely to graduate high school, less likely to fall into poverty as an adult and more likely to complete an additional year of education … On some measures, such as the high school graduation rate, the gains from a 20% boost in funding at all levels of education were enough to entirely erase the gap between poor students and students from wealthier families … The effects held even when controlling for the impact of other social programs.”
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Are School Closings The ‘New Jim Crow’? Activists File Civil Rights Complaints.

The Washington Post

“Complaints sent to the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights and the Justice Department, charge that students of color from Newark, Chicago and New Orleans have been disproportionately affected by school closures and charter-school expansions … Shuttered schools have been replaced by public charter schools, which are funded by taxpayers but are privately operated … Activists said local and state governments neglected and starved the neighborhood schools of resources, guaranteeing their poor quality. They argue that the charter schools that opened as replacements generally were not academically better. Meanwhile, the shuttering of neighborhood schools has damaged African American communities … Said Karran Harper Royal, a New Orleans parent and a public education advocate. ‘Most African American parents in New Orleans don’t have the choice of neighborhood schools, unlike their white counterparts.’”
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Despite Shocking Reports Of Fraud At Charter Schools, Lawmakers Miss Opportunity To Increase Oversight

The Nation

“Lawmakers in the House largely missed an opportunity to strengthen oversight of charter schools, passing a bill to encourage charter school growth by boosting federal funding without including several amendments that were offered to increase transparency and accountability. The bill … increases federal funding for charters from $250 million to $300 million … The fact that Democrats did not rally around bids for better oversight indicates how murky the party’s education platform has grown … ‘Why is it that we think this is such a valid method of instruction and structure that we are willing to invest nine figures worth of federal money in those programs when we’re starving programs like Title 1 and IDEA?’ asked Representative Tim Bishop of New York.”
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The Gathering Resistance to Standardized Tests

Rethinking Schools

“In the wake of a decade-long barrage of standardized tests unleashed by No Child Left Behind, Race to the Top, and now the Common Core, a movement of resistance has emerged around the country in the last year … In what came to be known as ‘Education Spring’ … More affluent, predominantly white activists will need to develop an anti-racist understanding of the movement against standardized testing and the barriers that communities of color face to joining – including the very real fear from parents of color that their children’s schools will be shut down if they don’t encourage them to score well on the tests … Not only do these tests narrow the curriculum, kill creativity, and degrade the quality of education for everyone, they also funnel black and brown youth into prison in unprecedented numbers … A multiracial fightback against the testing industrial complex … has the potential to change the terms of the education reform debate.”
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How Can Schools Close The Technology Gap And How Much Will It Cost?

The Hechinger Report

“Reaching the goal of putting every teacher and student on an Internet device, and making sure it can actually connect to the Internet, will require a major financial investment … High-poverty urban and rural districts … will likely require significant help from the federal government because their budgets tend to rely more on federal funding than on state aid and local property taxes. But given the strain on school budgets in recent years, experts say middle-income districts also need help … A survey … found that only 2.3% of responding districts had wireless … 93% said the current E-rate funding didn’t fully meet their needs. 18% said they’d applied for money to fund internal systems and were rejected. 37% said they didn’t bother, although they needed the money… Solving the hardware problems by getting the broadband and devices to schools is just the first step in closing the technology gap. Once schools are wired and teachers and students have devices in hand, next they have to learn how to use them effectively.”
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