Tuesday, May 25, 2010

Ed board upholds closing of Mass. charter school - Boston.com

Ed board upholds closing of Mass. charter school

May 25, 2010

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SPRINGFIELD, Mass.—An embattled charter school in Springfield is slated to close for good next month after losing an appeal before the state Board of Education.

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The board originally voted in January to revoke the charter of the Robert M. Hughes Academy, which had been under investigation for cheating during last year's MCAS exams.

School officials appealed to an impartial hearing officer, who recommended that the board uphold the charter revocation.

The board's second vote on Monday means the Hughes Academy -- which has 180 students in kindergarten through 8th grade -- must cease operations at the end of the academic year on June 17.

Exercise limits: Just 1 in 5 kids live near parks

Health officials say one reason so many American kids are overweight is that few have a nearby place to play and exercise.

More teachers’ unions throw support behind R.I.’s race to top

by Michelle R. Smith, Associated Press

PROVIDENCE — Several of Rhode Island’s teachers unions and school districts have signed on to the state’s application for $75 million in federal education grants, strengthening the state’s chances in the second round of the US Department of Education’s Race to the Top competition, Education Commissioner Deborah Gist said yesterday.

Blogging breakfast in the classroom | School Zone | Chron.com - Houston Chronicle

Blogging breakfast in the classroom

HISD Superintendent Terry Grier's breakfast-in-the-classroom program has inspired a blogby Lisa, a mother of a Herod Elementary School kindergartener. Lisa details how the program plays out at her school, shares nutritional information about the food (including some stats that might surprise you about the Trix yogurt) and invites comments from other parents. She posts photos, too:

From the "First Class Breakfast?" blog

Lisa saved this photo under the title "waste."

And writes:

Unopened milk from all 5 Kindergarten classes at Herod. I don't know exactly how many children were served this morning, but the overall number of meals served is declining. Only 14 kids in one classroom, the usual 8 in another. This is not because parents are choosing to opt-out, but the kids are. Perhaps the novelty and initial excitement of eating breakfast in the classroom is wearing off a bit, or maybe they really aren't hungry. Teachers, and I'm sure the parents,

Teachers Converge on State Capitol on May 25 to Urge Lawmakers to Stop Cutting Education - California Teachers Association

Teachers Converge on State Capitol on May 25 to Urge Lawmakers to Stop Cutting Education

Contacts: Sandra Jackson at 916-325-1550 or Mike Myslinski, 650-552-5324

Sacramento -

Armed with cell phones and commitment cards, more than 200 educators from across the state will start the day Tuesday by sending text messages to their local legislators and going office to office in the Capitol asking them to stop public school cuts, to protect our classrooms during the current state budget crisis – and to sign a commitment card pledging to keep their promises to students. Lawmakers who have signed on to protect public education from cuts will join teachers at a noon CTA news conference.

“The polls show that voters are concerned about funding cuts to public education and believe our schools and students should be a top priority during the budget fight, especially after public education has been cut by $17 billion over the last two years,” said David A. Sanchez, president of the 325,000-member California Teachers Association. “Now the governor’s revised budget wants to cut billions more while also wiping out child care. Teachers will be asking lawmakers to stop the cuts, and to sign commitment cards to show they will make protecting schools a top priority.”

The cards are part of a California Education Coalition campaign outlined at www.PromiseToStudents.com. They ask legislators to promise to protect public schools from further cuts; stand by the agreement signed into law last summer to repay $11.2 billion owed to public schools; and to oppose any attempt to undermine Proposition 98, the voter-approved minimum school funding guarantee.

WHAT: News conference with teachers and legislators and daylong lobbying by more than 200 California public school teachers from across the state. They will meet face to face with their lawmakers to ask them to sign cards committing them to protecting schools from more cuts. Assembly card signers Tom Torlakson and Tony Mendoza will speak at the news conference.

WHEN and WHERE: Lobbying by teachers is 11:30 a.m. to 3:45 p.m. Tuesday, May 25, in the Capitol. The news conference is noon-12:30 p.m. on the north steps of the Capitol building. Names of lawmakers who have signed the commitment cards will be unveiled.

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The 325,000-member CTA is affiliated with the 3.2 million-member National Education Association.

RELATED TAGS: Election, Budget, Funding, Legislation, Press Release, Featured

Californians Say Don't Cut Our Schools | California Progress Report

Californians Say Don't Cut Our Schools

by kaldveer

By Rupa Dev
New America Media
An overwhelming majority of Californians think not enough state funding is going to their public schools and that K-12 education is the area they most want to protect from spending cuts, according to a recent survey.
“Californians and Education,” an annual survey released by the Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC), found 62 percent of Californians polled who think their local schools aren’t receiving enough state funding. That’s a 10 percent increase from last year’s survey.

Even Arizona Voted For a Tax Increase

by christine

By Robert Cruickshank
Arizona - the same state that held an orgy of anti-Latino racism masquerading as a legislative session - should have made headlines last week for a different reason: voters there approved a sales tax increase to avert further crippling state budget cuts:
The 1-cent-per-dollar sales-tax increase that Arizona voters approved Tuesday affects everyone.
While even lawmakers who fought the tax increase expected Proposition 100 to pass, almost everyone was surprised at its hefty 64 percent approval rate. It passed in 14 of the 15 counties and drew healthy "yes" margins in some of the state's more conservative outposts, such as Yavapai and La Paz counties, according to unofficial results.
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Report: Banks Pulling Out of Prime Mortgage Lending in Communities of Color

by christine

By Kevin Stein
Among the justifications for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) that injected capital into banks was the stabilizing of distressed financial institutions so that they could then turn around and lend to businesses and consumers starving for credit.
Well, TARP may have succeeded in stabilizing financial institutions, but this did not translate into more credit for Main Street.
Most Americans have a sense that lending by banks has dropped dramatically over the last couple of year, and that it is hard for homeowners, consumers and small businesses to get loans these days. But in fact, some communities are having a harder time than others.
read mor

Education Research Report: Educational Economics: Where Do School Funds Go?

Educational Economics: Where Do School Funds Go?

by Jonathan Kantrowitz

Ω

Center on Reinventing Public Education, Marguerite Roza, 2010

As federal and local budgets tighten, pressure mounts to spend every dollar right. Yet our current school funding system is so messy and complex that officials often have a hard time even comparing per-pupil funding from one school and program to another. In this concise analysis, Marguerite Roza tracks the often inequitable and illogical results of a finance system split between federal block funding, foundation grants, earmarks, set-asides and union mandates. Nationwide, resources flow toward upper-income and high-achieving students rather than their at-risk peers. Schools are forced to fund electives and athletics above core subjects. And per-pupil allocations can vary widely even within a district. Given the messy, circular nature of the problem, Roza advocates a sweeping set of reforms. Among the elements she proposes: an open market for providers and a money-follows-the-child system, weighted based on student characteristics.

CT Context

Roza’s call for an overhaul of school finance parallels ConnCAN’s report on Connecticut’s antiquated, opaque

Creating a New Teaching Profession

by Jonathan Kantrowitz

Ω

Urban Institute, Eds. Dan Goldhaber and Jane Hannaway, April 2010

Summary
Studies show that teachers are the most important schooling factor in whether or not a student achieves in the classroom. In this new book, Goldhaber and Hannaway set forth a range of ideas for strengthening the teaching corps—from a selective, portable national teaching credential to a revamped retirement system. The book suggests that coherence and coordination are key: smart hiring, for instance, needs to be supported by smart salary policies. Whereas current school policies tend to treat all teachers as interchangeable, the book advocates the creation of more specialized, differentiated teaching positions and a more flexible, performance-

A Smarter Teacher Layoff System Ω “A Smarter Teacher Layoff System: How Quality-Based Layoffs Can Help Schools Keep Great Teachers in Tough Economic Times" Amid financial crunches and budget cuts, many school districts are now grappling with the prospect of letting go large numbers ...

“School Leadership Matters" “School Leadership Matters: A guide for Connecticut donors, and education and legislative leaders” Fairfield County boasts levels of education and wealth that are among the highest in the nation—but it is also home to one of the nation’s widest ...

Notes from the news, May 25 | Philadelphia Public School Notebook

Notes from the news, May 25

by Erika Owens

A better atmosphere at South Phila. High Daily News
Interim principal Ozzie Wright has met with students and a teacher says "he's really listening to the staff."
See also: Ex-S. Phila. principal still on district payroll The Inquirer
Ackerman names principals for overhauled schools The Inquirer
Two of the Promise Academies will keep their current principals.
Fatimah Ali: Hope for the schools, and Ackerman Daily News
When Ackerman arrived in Philly, Ali believed in the new superintendent's ability, but recent events have made Ali more critical.

Students respond to teachers’ effort at Cramp Elementary Philadelphia Tribune
The school won the Keystone Award for Continuous Progress for posting consistent test score improvement.
West Philadelphia high school dares to build a 100 m.p.g. car The Christian Science Monitor
The students are competing against auto companies and big name universities for a $7.5 million prize
See also: How Hands-On Learning Has Made Me A Better Person Philly Education Justice blog
Examining Standardized Testing Philly Education Justice blog
PSU member Gregory Jordan Detamore connects testing to the textbook industry and a perpetuation of the divide between the haves and have-nots.

NE Phila. Grade School Teacher Returns from Military Service in Afghanistan KYW
Charter Schools’ Big Success? Accounting Tricks, Shady Land Deals, and Skimming Off the Top Labor Notes blog
Please email us if we missed anything today or if you have any suggestions of publications, email lists, or other places for us to check for news.
Click here to get Notes from the news in your inbox every day.
Notes from the news

What the Gulf Oil Spill Can Teach Us About School Spending :: Frederick M. Hess

What the Gulf Oil Spill Can Teach Us About School Spending

by Frederick M. Hess • May 25, 2010 at 9:29 am
Cross-posted from Education Week

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We're watching a slow-motion disaster unfold in the Gulf, as BP and Transoceanic fumble around with booms, siphons, and talk of "junk shots" while hundreds of thousands of gallons of oil a day spew into the Gulf. Our attention is focused on public hearings and how to contain the damage. Fair enough.

But we might want to take a moment to think about how we got here. We're drilling in deep-water and, at least up until a few weeks ago, were aiming to do a lot more of it because of our enormous appetite for crude oil. Perhaps the most elegant solution to this dilemma was offered back in 1993 by the Clinton Administration, when it proposed to help balance the budget by taxing Americans for the energy they actually consumed (this was Gore's "BTU" tax). The proposal would have used simple price incentives, rather than heavy-handed rules or mandates, to curb our energy appetite and ensure that the cost of oil more accurately reflected its actual social cost.

Of course, the BTU proposal went down, just as most calls to raise gas taxes typically do. So, today, we've wound up with massive ethanol subsidies and with Congress debating a convoluted "cap-and-trade" scheme--all so our elected officials can do something about energy without it being so transparent as directly raising our

The For-Profit Question

by Frederick M. Hess • May 24, 2010 at 9:27 am
Cross-posted from Education Week

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So long as we recognize that it is no wiser to romanticize them than to demonize them, we absolutely ought to welcome for-profits into the education sector. For that reason, recent administration moves to favor nonprofits and public operators and to marginalize for-profits, in areas such as i3 and higher education, are problematic.

For-profit providers rarely make an explicit case for their own existence, because they're so busy trying to curry favor with public officials and because parents are so worried about for-profits' public image. There's much discussion of choices and love of at-risk children, but little adult discussion of the benefits implicit in for-profit provision. While I've spent my entire working life in the employ of public entities and nonprofits (making me a peculiar defender of for-profits), I thought it's worth taking a moment to say a few things about for-profits that really should be said.

While they certainly boast their own set of potential weaknesses, for-profits also have unique strengths. Several of these are particularly relevant today. First, because for-profits seek to earn competitive returns for investors, promising entrepreneurs are positioned to tap vast sums through the private equity markets. Second, for-profits

Graduation Mash-Up: Reality-Check Time - THE DAILY RIFF - Be Smarter. About Education.

Graduation Mash-Up: Reality-Check Time

Three To Read
Sharp Observations On Our Graduating Class

By C.J. Westerberg

1) Do check out this week's The New Yorker with a poignant cover illustration complementing Simon Rich's "Your New College Graduate: A Parents' Guide", a farcical quick-read on unemployed college grads at home with mom and dad. The consensus here at The Daily Riff is that it didn't float our boat, especially for this publication - think it would have been more entertaining a few years ago or if the author had taken a different angle (maybe a student's POV?). What's your riff on this? Yay or Nay?

2) Joe Queenan's "A Lament For The Class of 2010" from The Wall Street Journal, on the other side of the spectrum, is a chilling must-read portrayal of the new reality faced by recent grads. He begins his story with a "smart, talented, enterprising young man" with his newly-minted Ivy League degree who was both living at home and "working" as an intern at a NYC street fair. Queenan continues:

" . . . Over the next few weeks, hundreds of thousands of Millennials will graduate from institutions of higher learning. They will celebrate for several days, perhaps several weeks. Then they will enter a labor force that neither wants nor needs them. They will enter an economy where roughly 17% of people aged 20 through 24 do not have a job, and where two million college graduates are unemployed. They will enter a world where they will compete tooth and nail for jobs as waitresses, pizza delivery men, file clerks, bouncers, trainee busboys, assistant baristas, interns at

AM News: All Arizona (Tax Breaks, Ethnic Studies Ban This Week In Education

This Week In Education

Pundits: Smarick Returns To Public Service

by Alexander Russo

Proving yet again that he's not afraid to work in the agencies that he writes about, Andy Smarick is headed off to New Jersey to be the deputy superintendent for the state DOE, according to EdWeek. I didn't always agree with Smarick, or even understand what he was saying (about turnarounds, for example), but he was a smart, friendly, welcome addition to the blogosphere and I admire him for walking the walk and returning to public service.

AM News: All Arizona (Tax Breaks, Ethnic Studies Ban)

by Alexander Russo

High court to hear Arizona school case AP: The U.S. Supreme Court will consider ending a lawsuit that challenges Arizona's tax breaks for donations for thousands of private school scholarships.... Ariz. Ban On Ethnic Studies Divides Educators NPR: The law targets any ethnic studies classes in the state's public school system that "advocate ethnic solidarity instead of the treatment of pupils as individuals.".. Miss. board denies staging 'sham' prom for lesbian AP: A rural Mississippi school district that was sued by a lesbian student who wanted to bring a same-sex date to the high school prom is denying accusations it routed her to a "sham prom" while most of her schoolmates partied elsewhere... Education" href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/24/arts/television/24bordentown.html" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(34, 68, 187); ">Television Review: Considering Separate but Equal on PBS NYT: “A Place Out of Time: The Bordentown School” on PBS traces the history of an all-black school in New Jersey, a microcosm of good intentions and misguided theories... 9 plead not guilty in Obama loan case AP: The former employees of Vangent Inc. are accused of gaining access to a computer at the contractor's office in Coralville between July 2007 and March 2009 and getting into Obama's records while he was either a candidate for president, president-elect or president.

Quote: Duncan Unconcerned About Texas Textbooks

by Alexander Russo

"Whatever Texas decides, I do not think there will be large ripple effects around the country. Textbook companies today have a real ability to customize textbooks." -- Arne Duncan on CNN

Money: Districts Might Cut Summer School

by Alexander Russo

image from www.robertbatemansecondary.com

Districts might lay off hundreds of teachers, and they might cut summer school, too: A poll by the American Association of School Administrators found that 34 percent of respondents are considering eliminating summer classes for the 2010-11 school year because of money woes.(Summer School Canceled in Many Cash-Strapped States).

Data may help DPS improve regional outcomes - The Denver Post

DENVER AND THE WEST

Data may help DPS improve regional outcomes

By Jeremy P. Meyer
The Denver Post

POSTED: 05/25/2010 01:00:00 AM MDT

UPDATED: 05/25/2010 01:53:02 AM MDT

School officials are parsing data to try to figure out why educational outcomes for Denver Public Schools students are inconsistent from region to region.

Using data collected in the annual Strategic Regional Analysis, leaders see why students leave their home schools, where the weakest schools are located, and how to address overcrowding and high vacancies.

The goal of the analysis is not to nitpick the numbers but to make every school perform at a high level and to ensure that all students graduate ready for college and careers, said Superintendent Tom Boasberg.

"We need to keep our eye on what are we ultimately trying to do here," Boasberg said at a board meeting Monday — pointing to a chart that shows the

EXTRAS

Review the DPS Strategic Regional Analysis (PDF document).

district's graduation statistics and how many students needed to take remedial classes once they got to college.

"You see those percentages are truly a crisis," Boasberg said about the remediation rates of North and West high schools — where 96 percent and 99 percent of graduates needed remedial classes when in college.

The results of the SRA might include turnaround strategies for existing schools and opening new schools to address the lapses, he said.

"It calls out how much more work we need to do to significantly improve," he said, adding t

University of Puerto Rico strike: “Not since Vieques… � Fred Klonsky's blog

University of Puerto Rico strike: “Not since Vieques…

by preaprez

The University of Puerto Rico retreated on some cuts on Saturday. But the student strike continues.
Reports the Miami Herald:

Not since Puerto Rico rallied to chase the United States Navy out of Vieques a decade ago have so many different social sectors rallied around a single cause. Experts say a university with a history of often-leftist political struggles that sometimes ended in violence has, for the first time, launched an island-wide walkout that underscores discontent felt throughout Puerto Rico.
As more people here lose their jobs, experts say the UPR strike stands as a symbol of a society fed up with a soured economy and messy politics.

Tuesday, May 25, 2010