Saturday, February 6, 2010

Charter Schools' Political Success is a Civil Rights Failure: CRP--News and Media

Los Angeles—February 4, 2010— Today, the Civil Rights Project/Proyecto Derechos Civiles at UCLA issued "Choice Without Equity: Charter School Segregation and the Need for Civil Rights Standards," a nationwide report based on an analysis of Federal government data and an examination of charter schools in 40 states and the District of Columbia, along with several dozen metropolitan areas with large enrollments of charters. The report found that charter schools continue to stratify students by race, class, and possibly language, and are more racially isolated than traditional public schools in virtually every state and large metropolitan area in the country.

"President Barack Obama just delivered his budget to the U.S. Congress which increases both incentives and resources to create more charter schools," Erica Frankenberg, co-author of the report said. "This report should be considered in evaluating new federal incentives to states that encourage the expansion of charter schools, such as the Race to the Top initiative."

The study's key findings suggest that charter schools, particularly those in the western United States are havens for white re-segregation from public schools; requirements for providing essential equity data to the federal government go unmet across the nation; and magnet schools are overlooked, in spite of showing greater levels of integration and academic achievement than charters.

Identifying O.C.'s best elementary schools | schools, school, score - News - The Orange County Register

The Orange County Register's rankings are designed to show which elementary schools in Orange County provide the richest academic experience and strongest environment for learning – from schools with the best test scores to those with cultural diversity and small class sizes.

The results generated a ranking system of more than a dozen measurements for 388 public elementary schools.

Data sources: All the data used to create the rankings come from the state Department of Education and Register education partner GreatSchools, and is available publicly. The categories were chosen and weighted in consultation with local education experts.
Who wasn't ranked: After consultation with county education leaders, we omitted K-8 schools, but kept smaller schools with fewer grade offerings than the typical K-5 or K-6. Because we know parents will want to know how their schools performed, we provide the raw data for those 12 schools.

Article Tab : Isojiro Oka Elementary School first-graders Mikaela Orloff, Justin Garcia, Max Donaldson and Peyton Vida enjoy a visit from Wolfie, the school's mascot, during a recent lunch.

This score is determined by combining a school's academic and school environment scores. Academics forms 75 percent of the total rank. School environment contributes 25 percent. Each category, like the Register rank, runs from 1-388, with 1 indicating the best.

Academics

The Register simplified its academic rating this year, swapping several categories of the California Standards Test and the Academic Performance Index used in 2009 for education partner GreatSchools' rating.

GreatSchools rating: GreatSchools issues schools a rating from 10, the best possible score, through 1, based on the percent of students who are proficient on California Standardized Tests in English, math and other core subjects. Great Schools calculates ratings by grade, subject and demographic combinations, then averages those ratings to achieve an overall school figure. Those same standardized tests are used by the state to help generate elementary school Academic Performance Indexes. Click here for a detailed explanation on GreatSchools ratings. This category constitutes half of the academic score.
2008 API similar schools rank: The state ranks each school's API performance against 100 schools of similar demographic makeup. Schools that perform in the top 10 percent of their comparison set receive a score of 10; those that perform in the bottom 10 percent receive a 1. The 2008 similar school score is the most recent – the 2009 ranking is released in May. This equals one-sixth of Academics score. Note: Trabuco Elementary and Silverado Elementary schools did not receive a score because of their small sizes. Heroes Elementary did not receive a score because the school just opened in 2008.
2010 Best Public Schools:
Elementary Excellence
What works, what doesn't: From the best to those struggling, how O.C. schools rank in 2010.
Top districts: Smaller districts seem to have the edge
Top 10
1. Oka Elementary
2. Loyal Barker Elementary
3. Jack L. Weaver Elementary
4. Panorama Elementary
5. Arroyo Elementary
6. Northwood Elementary
7. Stone Creek Elementary
8. Mariners Elementary
9. Ladera Elementary
10. Olinda Elementary
Review the data
Compare schools in our database of 388 elementary and 12 K-8 campuses
Methodology: Our criteria for ranking the schools.

Education officials cry foul over governor's cuts - Times-Standard Online

Education officials cry foul over governor's cuts - Times-Standard Online:

"Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has developed a budget proposal that he claims “protects education,” yet local school officials continue to cry foul over a spending plan they say takes even more away from their already shrunken piece of the state's budget pie.

In reality, the proposed budget will actually cut $2.5 billion from the state's education funds, said Garry Eagles, superintendent of the Humboldt County Office of Education.
Schwarzenegger is being dishonest, he said, and, across the state, schools will likely have to make more cuts and lay off employees to make their budgets work.
”You can't cut as deep as that and not cut vital services...,” Eagles said. “I want parents, students and community members to know that's going to happen.”"

The future of education lies in the cloud | eSchoolNews.com

Cloud computing offers game-changing options for education.

Calls to improve K-12 education are routine. Business leaders, educators, and other stakeholders demand that our children acquire the knowledge and skills needed to grow our rapidly evolving economy. Yet, although digital resources have expanded learning opportunities, classroom pedagogy has not changed much in the last 50 years. Throwing more money at existing approaches will at best produce only incremental improvements.

Since the 19th century, schools have used textbooks to deliver instructional content. Textbooks, however, are expensive, their content starts to age upon publication, and they must be replaced periodically. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has called for California schools to shift to digital textbooks to save much of the $350 million that the state annually budgets for textbooks and instructional materials. Moreover, textbooks are hardly interactive and are isolated from the computing resources with which we have provisioned our schools at great expense. Textbooks met the needs of the 19th and 20th centuries, but they fall far short of 21st century needs. They are old-school delivery that supports old-school pedagogy.

Stress is good for children - Parenting - Relationships - Life - The Times of India

Stress is good for children - Parenting - Relationships - Life - The Times of India:

"Children who react strongly to stress or have more behaviour and health problems than their peers are likely to do well when raised in a supportive environment, a new study says. "Parents and teachers may find that sensitive children, like orchids, are more challenging to raise and care for," says Jelena Obradovi, assistant professor at the School of Education at Stanford University.

"But they can bloom into individuals of exceptional ability and strength when reared in a supportive, nurturing, and encouraging environment," he adds.

Researchers looked at 338 KG students, as well as their teachers and families, to determine how family adversity and biological reactivity contribute to healthy development.

They found that children who had significantly stronger biological reactions to a series of mildly stressful tasks designed to look like challenges in their daily lives were more affected by their family contexts, both bad and good.

Stress is good for kids (Getty Images)

Friday, February 5, 2010

Substantial Increase or Funding Cliff? � The Quick and the Ed

Substantial Increase or Funding Cliff? The Quick and the Ed

As the budget came out last week with the details this week, I expected that some in the education community would take the glass half full approach and talk about how the education community should be thankful for the 6 percent increase in funding at the same time that the President is proposing a domestic spending limit. While others would take the glass half empty approach and talk about the pending fiscal cliff that schools will face as the stimulus funding for special education and Title I run out and schools face federal funding cuts. What I did not expect was for the same person to be saying both. But, that speaks to the flexibility of NEA lobbyist Joel Packer.

Last week he was congratulating the administration for the substantial funding increase for education in the new budget, and this week commenting that federal funding cliff is a serious problem. What changed?

News: The Emerging Hispanic-Serving Institution - Inside Higher Ed

WASHINGTON – The number of institutions officially recognized by the federal government as “Hispanic serving” is set to rise dramatically in the coming years, according to a comprehensive study of Latino enrollment in higher education.

In the 1980s, the designation Hispanic-serving institution (HSI) was created by the federal government to directfunding to nonprofit colleges where at least 25 percent of the full-time-equivalent students are Latino. On Thursday, Excelencia in Education, an advocacy group for Latino students, released a report identifying the growing number of institutions that do not meet the HSI enrollment threshold of 25 percent but that fit its definition of “emerging HSIs” – meaning that they “are within the critical mass range of 15-24 percent and have the potential to become HSIs in the next few years.”

Using data federal data from 2006-7, the report states that there were, at that point, 265 HSIs; another 176 institutions were on the brink of becoming HSIs and met its definition of “emerging.”

“Emerging” HSIs were located in 20 states. The highest concentration of these institutions was in California, which had 52, followed by Texas, which had 42. Still, Deborah Santiago, the report's author and vice president for policy and research at Excelencia, said at a discussion accompanying the report’s release on Capitol Hill that these institutions are “not just in those places where we expect to see Latinos.” For instance, Arkansas, Indiana, Kansas, Oregon and Utah are among the states that had one such institution.

CNN Political Ticker: All politics, all the time Blog Archive - CNN Fact Check: Student loans � - Blogs from CNN.com

CNN Political Ticker: All politics, all the time Blog Archive - CNN Fact Check: Student loans - Blogs from CNN.com
CNN) – President Barack Obama says the federal government is wasting money by paying banks to offer student loans, and wants to cut out what he calls "middlemen" who cost taxpayers billions, and to use the savings to expand other financial aid programs.

"It turns out that right now a lot of the student loan programs are still run through financial institutions and banks. So you got this middleman, and they get billions of dollars per year managing loans that are guaranteed by the federal government," Obama said at a New Hampshire event Tuesday. Obama said those middlemen "are essentially taking no risks, and yet they're still extracting these huge profits."

Read the facts and the bottom line after the jump:

CNN Fact Check: Would cutting student loan subsidies save taxpayers billions?

– The Obama administration says it can provide student loans far cheaper by eliminating the loan

New Analysis Suggests Teachers' Voices Do Not Have A Strong Influence On The Policy Agenda | Public Agenda

WASHINGTON, D.C. (January 26, 2010) — Educational reformers of all stripes have focused tremendous energy on thinking of ways to identify effective teachers and in turn recruit, retain, compensate and support them. But what do teachers think of their ideas? The Retaining Teacher Talent study, a nationwide study conducted by Learning Point Associates and Public Agenda suggests that what teachers think are good indicators of effectiveness—and what they think will make them more effective—are not always aligned with current priorities in education policy.

This third release of data from the Retaining Teacher Talent study, Convergence and Contradictions in Teachers' Perceptions of Policy Reform Ideas, seeks to draw teachers into the debate, to bring nuance and experience to the conversation. This report describes the implications of the results of the nationwide survey for policymakers and teachers who want to influence policy.

“As we enter this new decade, teachers stand at the center of this policy vortex,” said Sabrina Laine, Ph.D., chief program officer for educator effectiveness at Learning Point Associates. "Democratizing the national policy conversation by getting teachers involved provides a bridge between policy and practice. Ultimately, grounding this debate with the voices of experience and evidence is of critical importance. The success of these reforms rests in large part on the support of those who will be most directly affected—teachers.”

“There’s a conventional wisdom that teachers uniformly resist the idea of measuring teacher effectiveness, but in fact, teachers are open to a number of different ways of doing it, including looking at how much their own students learn compared to other students. And most teachers agree that making it easier to take ineffective teachers out of the classroom would improve education,” said Jean Johnson, director of Education Insights at Public Agenda. “It’s way past time to get teachers themselves involved in these crucial discussions about how to judge teacher effectiveness.”

College Inc. - Coffee with Pomona President Oxtoby

College Inc.- Coffee with Pomona President Oxtoby:

"I had coffee this morning -- tea, actually -- with David W. Oxtoby, president of Pomona College.

Pomona, founded in 1887, is the top liberal arts school in California and one of the best in the nation, with a record 6,700 applications this year for 380 seats in the freshman class. It's the founding member of the Claremont Colleges consortium. Students can swim in the Pacific Ocean in the morning, then drive to the mountains and ski.

('Must be rather tiring,' as television's Basil Fawlty once observed.)

He was on his way out of town ahead of the 'high-impact storm' bearing down on us.

Oxtoby has been president of Pomona since 2003. He is a well-known physical chemist, trained at Harvard and Berkeley, previously Dean of the Division of Physical Sciences at the University of Chicago. He still teaches a course in environmental chemistry."

Learn NY: The Buffalo News: David Steiner: New York’s application bids for urgently needed help

Learn NY: The Buffalo News: David Steiner: New York’s application bids for urgently needed help:

"With a statewide graduation rate of only 70 percent and below 50 percent in many low-income communities, and too many high school graduates unready for college, we must work urgently to deliver the promise of educational opportunity for New York State’s 3 million school children. Keeping the promise requires that all schools have truly effective teachers and principals, rigorous curricula, well-designed assessments and a clear mission of achieving ambitious educational outcomes for every child.

This is the core of successful K-12 education and the foundation of New York’s Race to the Top application. Race to the Top is a fierce competition that awards federal funds only to those states willing to make bold changes to ensure all children succeed."

Sacramento Homeless Organizing Committee

Sacramento Homeless Organizing Committee is serving as Claims Administrator for the case: LEHR, ET AL. V. SACRAMENTO COUNTY, ET AL.

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT, EASTERN DISTRICT OF CALIFORNIA CASE NO. 2:07-CV-01565 MCE GGH

DID YOU LOSE PROPERTY DURING THE PERIOD FROM AUGUST 2, 2005, TO DATE TO SACRAMENTO COUNTY SHERIFF’S, PARK RANGERS, OR OTHER COUNTY EMPLOYEES WHILE YOU WERE HOMELESS IN SACRAMENTO COUNTY? If so, you may be eligible for monetary compensation.

DOWNLOAD THE NOTICE OF CLASS ACTION

A class action lawsuit is presently pending in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of California.
If the proposed partial settlement described below receives final approval, homeless persons whose property was confiscated and/or destroyed by Sacramento County Sheriffs, Park Rangers, or other Sacramento County employees from August 2, 2005, to date, will be

3 Reasons Why Learning by Computer Alone is Not Enough - Teaching, Learning & Technology in Higher Education -

While I am convinced that technology combined with excellent instruction can allow the creation of new and powerful learning experiences for students, I am also convinced that "learning by computer" alone will never adequately prepare students for the complex challenges they will face as adults. Here's why...
Reason #1 - Learning is socially situated, and computer-mediated social interactions are a narrow approximation of human interaction
James Greeno (Stanford University) and numerous education researchers agree that learning is socially situated. The behaviorists of the 1920's were only partly right, it turns out. For example, learning to read a book is an important skill (behavior). But while reading a book by yourself engages your mind with the author's mind, it's only a one way street. Reading a book with others, and discussing it, then (in some cases) putting it to practice, brings the learning to new levels.
This is why I'm currently underwhelmed by current attempts to replace textbooks with electronic textbooks. While there is an obvious cost saving potential from eliminating the printing costs (and with open resources, the cost of content itself) and the backpack weight reductions are much appreciated, the exciting breakthrough will be when the electronic book does MORE than a printed book.
At Carnegie Mellon, Professor Ananda Gunawardena has shown what is possible through his "adaptive book" research. This electronic textbook system allows for the annotation of electronic text, but more importantly, the annotations are can be SHARED. Imagine margin notes that can be traded among study partners, and the ability download "expert commentaries" that can be revealed while reading. In essence, the textbook moves from a "solo learning experience" to becoming the foundation for shared conversation - and a new form of assessment.

Help Wanted: i3 Judges - Politics K-12 - Education Week

In a sign that the final regulations for the $650 million Investing in Innovationcompetition are just about ready, the Education Department has put out a call for peer reviewers. The deadline for those interested to apply is March 1.

In many ways, the i3 competition is a much bigger logistical problem for the department than Race to the Top, which has higher stakes. For Race to the Top, only states (and D.C.) could apply, limiting the number of applications. But i3 is open to all school districts, of which there are thousands across the country. Plus, within i3, there are three levels of grants, creating mini-competitions within a larger competition.

It will be difficult for the department to find i3 judges who are knowledgeable enough to judge all parts of an application. Since a big chunk of i3 is about providing evidence that a program does or might work, the Education Department will have to find experts in statistics, experimental and quasi-experimental models, and general research principles. Thus, the department is looking for people who are experts in at least one of these areas: education reform and policy, evidence, innovation, strategy, and application review as defined below. Likely candidates will be preK-12 teachers and principals, college

Sacramento Press / SCUSD reaches out to Hmong families to secure voice in budget, strategic plan

In an effort to ensure the greatest participation possible in two historic surveys, the Sacramento City Unified School District is teaming up with the Hmong Women’s Heritage Association (HWHA) to assist parents and students in completing questionnaires about the district’s budget and strategic plan from 3:30 p.m. to 6 p.m. on Friday, Feb. 5 at the Association’s offices, 2245 Florin Rd.

The first-of-its-kind endeavor to involve Sacramento residents in improving their public schools involves a pair of surveys on school improvements and the district’s budget. Every Sacramento community member—including parents, teachers and other employees of the district—is being asked to respond to the surveys that will yield for school board members and the superintendent a treasure trove of information about the community’s needs and priorities for public schools.

SCUSD Superintendent Jonathan Raymond said, “We have a valuable and important partner in the Hmong Women’s Heritage Association, and we greatly appreciate their assistance in reaching out to an important and vital part of our community.” He added, “We want to make

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