8/28/14 – Charter Schools Don’t Need An Ad Campaign

8/28/14 – Charter Schools Don’t Need An Ad Campaign:



8/28/14 – Charter Schools Don’t Need An Ad Campaign

August 27, 2014 Subscribe

THIS WEEK: Widening Inequality … Report Urges Fewer Tests … Arne Duncan’s Harmful Policies … High Teacher Turnover … Student Loan Apocalypse

TOP STORY

Charter Schools Don’t Need An Ad Campaign, They Need Regulation

By Jeff Bryant

“This time of year, while classroom teachers and administrators in public schools are busy welcoming students back to a new school year and figuring out how they’re going to cope with devastating financial constraints, advocates in the charter schools industry are propping up their image with an extensive new public relations campaign, called ‘Truth About Charters.’ That contrast alone pretty much tells you everything you need to know about where we are in the nation’s parallel education narratives, in which a gritty documentary competes with what is essentially an advertising campaign for a shiny, new product.”
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NEWS AND VIEWS

Back To School, And To Widening Inequality

Robert Reich

Economist Robert Reich writes on his personal blog, “The achievement gap between poor kids and wealthy kids isn’t mainly about race … It’s a reflection of the nation’s widening gulf between poor and wealthy families. And also about how schools in poor and rich communities are financed … As we segregate by income into different communities, schools in lower-income areas have fewer resources than ever. The result is widening disparities in funding per pupil … The wealthiest highest-spending districts are now providing about twice as much funding per student as are the lowest-spending districts … The United States is one of only three, out of 34 advanced nations surveyed by the OECD, whose schools serving higher-income children have more funding per pupil and lower student-teacher ratios than do schools serving poor students … Until we recognize we’re systematically hobbling schools serving disadvantaged kids, we’re unlikely to make much headway ”
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Accountability Report Urges Fewer Tests, More Peer Review

Education Week

“Accountability for the public schools should be far less test-driven and more the product of teachers holding one another to high professional standards, the National Center on Education and the Economy proposes in a report … Essentially, the NCEE calls on the U.S. to administer tests only in 4th, 8th, and 10th grades, and to use tests that focus largely on performance tasks. In other grades, tests would be taken by random samples of students. To ensure coverage of the full curriculum, these tests would gradually test science and other subjects in addition to English and math. If the results of these exams suggested that a school was falling behind the state curriculum or not sufficiently educating vulnerable students, they could trigger school inspections … The report also urges states to help set up “career ladders” in which experienced teachers would take on roles mentoring colleagues and refining teaching practices; teachers would be held to high standards by their peers.”
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Is Doing Less Harm Enough For Education Secretary Duncan?

The Washington Post

Barnett Berry, chief executive officer at the Center for Teaching Quality writes, “It has taken [Secretary of Education Arne] Duncan far too long to heed educators’ concerns about new evaluation systems reliant on tests not yet aligned with new college- and career-ready standards … So, what next? … The federal government could spread best practices for evaluation found in top-performing nations like Singapore … The U.S. Department of Education could help to ensure that evaluation systems yield useful information by encouraging states to implement serious peer review systems that give teachers information and support … The USDOE should maximize its new Teach to Lead initiative—inviting accomplished teachers to create and lead professional learning systems that spread expertise to improve student outcomes.”
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Half Of Teachers Leave The Job After Five Years. Here’s What To Do About It.

The Hechinger Report

“A new report … found that about 13% of the nation’s 3.4 million teachers move schools or leave the profession every year, costing states up to $2 billion. Researchers estimate that over 1 million teachers move in and out of schools annually, and between 40 and 50% quit within five years … The high turnover rates are sometimes due to layoffs, ‘but the primary reason they leave is because they’re dissatisfied’ … New teachers need more on-the-job training and mentor programs for the first two years that’s designed to keep them in the profession. Called ‘comprehensive induction,’ the training should include a high-quality, pre-screened mentor who is an experienced teacher, common planning time with other teachers, regular and rigorous training, and ongoing contact with school leaders.”
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These 9 Charts Show America’s Coming Student Loan Apocalypse

The Huffington Post

“More than half of Direct Loans … aren’t being repaid on time or as expected … Nearly half of the loans in repayment are in plans scheduled to take longer than 10 years. The number of loans in distress is rising. The increase in troubled loans comes as the average amount of student debt has significantly outpaced wage growth … The Education Department released data this month providing a much more detailed snapshot into how borrowers are coping with their federal student loans and how the government’s handpicked loan companies are juggling their obligations to borrowers and taxpayers … With a lackluster economy, tepid wage growth and vast numbers of Americans still looking for full-time work, some federal policymakers fear current borrowers will need more time to repay their loans than previous generations … The larger fear … ‘Will we have a generation of people who hit age 65 or 70 without any assets?’”
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