Flypaper: Education reform ideas Duncan’s Maryland mistake

Flypaper: Education reform ideas that stick, from the Thomas B. Fordham Institute:

"Late last week, Secretary Duncan (and his able team) acted on what I have every reason to believe were noble intentions. Unfortunately, the secretary missed a golden opportunity and possibly did more harm than good for reform in my beloved Maryland.

On Friday, Duncan, with Rev. Al Sharpton and former House speaker Newt Gingrich, visited Baltimore’s superb KIPP Ujima Village charter school, consistently one of the state’s highest-scoring schools despite its inner-city location. Because of union attacks, Ujima was recently forced to cut several teaching positions and end Saturday school. So egregious were its actions that numerous national outlets admonished the union, including the Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, and CNN."

Local News | Seattle Schools return to neighborhood-based system | Seattle Times Newspaper

Local News Seattle Schools return to neighborhood-based system Seattle Times Newspaper:

"Seattle Public Schools has officially returned to a neighborhood-based system of assigning students to schools, similar to one it abandoned about 30 years ago in the name of racial integration.

With unanimous vote at 11 p.m. Wednesday, the School Board approved a new set of boundaries for most of the district's schools that will determine where students will be guaranteed a spot. The boundaries will be phased in starting next fall with students in kindergarten, sixth and ninth grades."

Eduwonk » Blog Archive » Racing To The Top

Eduwonk » Blog Archive » Racing To The Top:

"Race to the Top final regulations are on the way Thursday [You can read them here]. Ed Week writes them up. To some extent they do reinforce the view that the tragedy of

Race to the Top is that the Department of Ed has to spend this money at all – the anticipation may well have leveraged more state-level change than the actual program will.
The punchline is that the readers/reviewers for the state applications are now the entire ballgame. If they’re not strong and keenly attuned to change and reform then this initiative won’t suceed. I’m not as glum as some of the voices in the Ed Week story, but the regs have changed (and not in a reformist direction) so without a strong process to really evaluate state plans it is possible that some weak plans could slip through this scoring metric. In the Department’s defense, they are planning a creative qualitative process to vet the applications after the initial scoring is done. That’s crucial for quality."

Few things that are getting attention: It’s easy to see why the Department wanted to create a more comprehensive state capacity rubric, but it could also open the door to a lot of fuzziness. Again, the expertise of the readers matter a lot. I’m not freaked out (although some are) by the minimizing of common standards or new assessments, that’s a nod political and capacity realities. It would have been nice to see high-quality charters weighted more…and they could have been more aggressive on the human capital front. It’s still a lot of points but could have included more teeth to really delineate states.*

Bouncing ball to keep your eye on: New York. A strict reading of this means the state shouldn’t be eligible, but will be interesting to see how that plays out…the argument is being made that because the NY teacher data ban only applies to tenure it’s not really a ban on evaluation at all. Of course, a reasonable person might conclude that if a tenure decision isn’t an evaluation then exactly what is? Then again, a reasonable person would have no place in New York education policymaking. Update: More from Tom Carroll on that.

Urbanite Duncan Continues Rural Outreach - Politics K-12 - Education Week

Urbanite Duncan Continues Rural Outreach - Politics K-12 - Education Week:

"Education Secretary Arne Duncan, whose education experience is firmly planted in urban ground, is continuing to reach out to rural folks to figure out how the reforms he's pushing will play out in the farther reaches of the country.

Nine rural superintendents, from Michigan, Texas, West Virginia, California, Mississippi, Kansas, South Dakota, Wyoming, and Arizona, gave him an earful during a more than hour-long chat with him yesterday.

The Rural Nine, first and foremost, said they were thrilled to get to hear straight from department officials about plans for turnaround schools and for reauthorizing the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. And, they were pleased they got to help educate Duncan on how schools work, and how reform might play out, in rural America."

Parent-Teacher Conference and Report Cards for G&T | GothamSchools

Parent-Teacher Conference and Report Cards for G&T GothamSchools:

"Last week our child’s G&T kindergarten class at PS 33 Chelsea Prep held parent-teacher conferences. Our conference went well though it was short — just 10 minutes — so the teacher could meet with every child’s parents. I was pleasantly surprised to receive a detailed report card for our child.

Below is a copy of the actual report card we received for our child (sorry for the poor quality!). I whited out the grades for obvious reasons and I’m not sure if all schools use the same report card, but this will give you an idea of how children in a G&T kindergarten class are evaluated. The grading scale is 1 to 4, with 4 being “exceeds grade-level standards” and 1 being “far below grade-level standards.”"

Teachable Moment: Ups and Downs

Teachable Moment: Ups and Downs:

"Arizona, when its elected officials aren't saying moronic things, is the undisputed charter school leader of our country. The state boasts 500 charter schools, which account for 25% of the public schools in the state and 10% of the student population (class size comparisons, anyone?). Seems like this should have rocketed Arizona to the top of the state rankings, right? Well, the only problem is that the state's charter schools don't show as much academic progress as the state's traditional public schools. At least, that's what a study out of Stanford University found."

Now, in fairness, apparently the charter supporters are saying that the methodology of the report is flawed.

So let's mark the findings with an asterisk for now. But what the sides both seem to agree on is that the quality of charter schools varies widely. No kidding.For some reason, the real diehard charter supporters seem to think that all charters are always better than all traditional public schools. Even in the face of evidence that it simply isn't true. And it's obviously not true. It doesn't even make sense. Rather, there are some charters that are excellent schools. Just as there are some traditional public schools that are excellent. Likewise, both have their duds. What makes a school good is not that it has a charter label affixed to it. That's ultimately just a label. As I've said before, we should stop focusing on the labels and start focusing on what actually makes schools good and successful and replicate that in as many schools as we can so that all schools can be good schools.

Charters can certainly be part of that picture, but they are not a complete answer in themselves.

Tough job for Detroit's academic czar | detnews.com | The Detroit News

Tough job for Detroit's academic czar detnews.com The Detroit News:

"It's 1:30 a.m. Tuesday, and Barbara Byrd-Bennett is e-mailing Detroit Public Schools' Emergency Financial Manager Robert Bobb one more thing to add to their to-do list.

She e-mails him at 4 a.m., when she cannot sleep. She e-mails him at 11 p.m., before she goes to bed. She e-mails him at 8:30 a.m. on Sundays from Cleveland, where she lives some weekends with her husband, Bruce, before returning to Detroit to do one of America's toughest big city jobs.

Byrd-Bennett is Bobb's academic czar and more: She is his co-chief."

When Byrd-Bennett told Bobb he was proposing budget cuts that would hurt children's learning, he backed off. When she recommended they negotiate a dramatically different teachers' contract, he followed. When she said Detroit had to radically change to compete with charter schools, Bobb agreed.

While Bobb is the school district's showman who woos the public with his no-nonsense message and anti-corruption results, Byrd-Bennett is the behind-the-scenes policy strategist charged with the arguably tougher job: dramatically improving student achievement in the country's most troubled urban school district.

"What is important to her is not the glory; it's the students and what's best for them," says Sharif Shakrani, co-director of Michigan State University's Education Policy Center, who worked with Byrd-Bennett in Washington, D.C.

GothamSchools - Breaking News and Analysis of the NYC Public Schools

GothamSchools - Breaking News and Analysis of the NYC Public Schools:

"Parents at Lower East Side schools that may soon be asked to share building space told DOE officials last night that a charter school expansion could not come at the expense of successful district schools.

Hundreds of parents packed into the auditorium of P.S. 20 last night to protest three proposed scenarios that would allow Girls Prep Charter School to grow its middle school program by re-arranging building space at neighboring district schools."

All of the proposals would require district school students to give up resource rooms like art and music rooms or science and computer labs, parents told DOE officials and members of the District 1 Community Education Council.
Parents speaking at the meeting repeatedly characterized that loss as a civil rights issue, charging the DOE with removing resources from predominantly poor and immigrant students. (more…)

Trying to Eliminate Auditors Who Aren't There

voiceofsandiego.org: Schooled... Trying to Eliminate Auditors Who Aren't There

Auditors say there's one small problem with the idea of San Diego Unified saving money by cutting auditors who look at issues other than finances: It doesn’t have any.

Eliminating those employees was one recommendation from the BRACE Team, which scrubbed the school district budget for savings that will impact the fewest number of children possible. It also recommended ending the fraud hotline, which allows anonymous callers to report financial waste and abuse. Cuts to the audits and investigations department would save the district $448,000, according to the report.

Academic Researchers’ Conflicts of Interest Go Unreported

Researchers’ Financial Interests Often Not Reported to U.S. - NYTimes.com

Few universities make required reports to the government about the financial conflicts of their researchers, and even when such conflicts are reported, university administrators rarely require those researchers to eliminate or reduce these conflicts, government investigators found.

In a report expected to be made public on Thursday, Daniel R. Levinson, the inspector general of the Department of Health and Human Services, said 90 percent of universities relied solely on the researchers themselves to decide whether the money they made in consulting and other relationships with drug and device makers was relevant to their government-financed research.

Board of Education members want to fine parents for kids' detention

Nutley Board of Education members want to fine parents for kids' detention | New Jersey Real-Time News - - NJ.com

NUTLEY -- To save money in the district’s $59 million budget, two Nutley board of education members want to pin some parents with the detention bills.

The board members, Steven Rogers and Walter Sautter, say they are hoping to adopt a policy by next school year that would charge parents for detention, which they estimate costs the district $10,000 a year in overtime and maintenance fees.

"It may not seem like a lot of money, but it adds up over time," Rogers said. "Parents need to step up to the plate and to be held responsible and accountable for their children’s habitual actions."

During a board meeting last month, Rogers, who also works as a police officer in town, and Sautter, a former science teacher at Nutley High School, outlined a proposal to fine parents whose children are consistently sent to after-school detention. Rogers and Sautter have not determined the size of the fines or how to define a student who is habitually in detention.

The proposal, which is being reviewed by the school board’s attorney, would be the first of its kind in the state, said Frank Bellusciop, spokesman for the New Jersey School Board Association.

The idea has drawn opposition from other board members and residents who say detention is an integral part of a public education.

"I understand what they’re trying to do, because we’re very conscious of the budget, and there’s going to be a tremendous amount that we’re going to have to cut in the upcoming year," said board member Kenneth Reilly. "But I don’t think it’s legal, because we’re responsible for detention."

Belluscio said although districts may charge for some extracurricular activities and field trips, charging for detention may be in violation of the state Constitution.

"Discipline is part of a public education," he said. "Since detention would have to be used to enforce discipline, it is doubtful that you could charge for that, the same way you can’t charge for someone taking a history class or math class."

Is a $26,000 UC education still a deal?

Is a $26,000 UC education still a deal? | Opinion L.A. | Los Angeles Times

That's $26,000 for a single year at a University of California campus, not the four usually needed to graduate. The UC Board of Regents voted today to increase basic education fees for undergraduates by 32% to more than $10,000 for the 20010-11 academic year. Throw in the roughly $16,000 per year required for room, board and books, and the UC system fees approach $30,000 per year -- and feel a lot like the cost of an Ivy League education with few of the perks. (None of this is to say, mind you, that the regents won't be forced to raise fees again in 2010, with the state facing a massive budget deficit of $21 billion over the next year and a half.)

As evidence points to suicide, Scott family said considering 2nd autopsy

WBBM 780 - Chicago's #1 source for local news, traffic and weather - As evidence points to suicide, Scott family said considering 2nd autopsy

CHICAGO (WBBM) -- Evidence of gunshot residue on Michael Scott's left hand offers the strongest indication to date that the Chicago Board of Education President took his own life. But, the Chicago Sun-Times reports, the family of the Chicago School Board president was weighing an independent autopsy nonetheless.

Police have determined that the .380 caliber gun found beneath Scott's body had belonged to Scott for nearly three decades, and say gunshot residue was found on Scott's left hand.

Despite that, Police Supt. Jody Weis said Wednesday that he wants to see the results of ballistics tests and video surveillance cameras, which he expects next week, before concluding that Scott shot himself in the head.

Uphill Battle To Reform Public School Food

Uphill Battle To Reform Public School Food — Empire Report

Tavon Frazier is a skinny 9-year-old squirming in front of his Styrofoam lunch tray. He's eaten most of his chicken taco and his friends, all wearing the navy polo shirts of East Oakland's Korematsu Discovery Academy, are wiggling around him, chewing on their flour tortillas and nibbling on baby carrots. Tavon didn't stop at the salad bar on his way to the cafeteria table today. He says sometimes he'll get applesauce when they have it, but mostly he doesn't like vegetables, especially broccoli and carrots. His ideal cafeteria meal would be "donuts and cupcakes and a cake," he says with a mischievous sideways grin.

Tavon Frazier

---

Efforts to make sure that Tavon doesn't end up eating donuts every day and maybe even learns to like broccoli are underway in Oakland's public schools, though how successful these efforts will be remains to be seen. Between a convoluted and chronically underfunded system, divergent visions for what exactly healthy food is, and a cast of characters that range from bureaucrats to poor kids to soccer moms to farm-to-table visionaries, the school food situation in Oakland is messy. But the consequences for inaction are no joke.

Today, Tavon is part of an experiment. His lunch is made from scratch in a kitchen that stands some 50 feet from his table.

"It's a totally different menu than what's being served in the rest of the elementary schools," says Jennifer LeBarre, director of nutrition services with Oakland Unified School District, as she watches kindergarteners line up for lunch. "We're doing it here as a pilot project because we're trying to see whether or not we have the capability with our equipment, our facilities, our staff." LeBarre says scratch cooking will be rolled out at Manzanita, Bella Vista and Lincoln elementary schools next. "And then our big hurdle is to see how we can take the same food and do it at the central kitchen level."

U.S. education chief to visit An Achievable Dream -- dailypress.com

U.S. education chief to visit An Achievable Dream -- dailypress.com:

"Duncan and U.S. Rep. Robert C. 'Bobby' Scott will tour An Achievable Dream Academy elementary school and the middle and high school. The visit is part of Duncan's Listening and Learning Tour of schools across the nation. Duncan aides said he uses the visits to gather feedback and ideas from students, parents, teachers, administrators, and business and community leaders on education reform and policy.

Duncan will visit a hybrid in the public district: two schools that sprung out of a summer program of tennis lessons and tutoring founded in 1992 by businessman Walter Segaloff.

In 1994, An Achievable Dream evolved into a public school for grades 3-5, part of the Newport News district but resembling a cross between a magnet and charter program. In 2007, the middle and high school opened in a former grade school remodeled to resemble an office complex."

BBC News - Teachers' scores 'added to Sats'

BBC News - Teachers' scores 'added to Sats':

"Next year's Sats results for England's schools will be published alongside teachers' assessments of pupils' work.

The move could head off a threatened boycott of the national tests by teachers and heads.

Education Secretary Ed Balls said the change did not signal the end of the tests but he was 'not closing the door' on further reforms.

Heads say league tables drawn up from results of tests taken by 11-year-olds do not reflect a school's achievement.

Earlier this year, the government's expert group on testing recommended ministers look at improving teacher assessment to see if it would be possible to 'move away' from externally marked tests, in the future.

Teacher assessment in this case means when teachers say which level they believe individual pupils to be working at."

In New Statewide Survey, Virginians Speak Out on Education Reform Topics

In New Statewide Survey, Virginians Speak Out on Education Reform Topics:

"Richmond, VA (PRWEB) November 19, 2009 -- While a majority of Virginia’s voters believe the state’s public school system is good or excellent, similar numbers favor school choice reforms such as tax-credit scholarships, school vouchers, and charter schools. Fifty-five percent of likely voters would opt for schools other than regular public schools, according to the results of a public opinion survey released today by a diverse group of twenty one state and national education, business, religious and policy organizations.

The survey of 1,203 likely voters was conducted October 1-4, and has a margin of error of plus or minus 2.8 percent. Braun Research, Inc., a New Jersey-based survey research company, administered the interviews and collected the data for the project. Braun Research has previously conducted surveys and completed other projects for the Gallup Organization, the Pew Research Center, and the Eagleton Poll. It is also the field house responsible for collecting data for the Newsweek Poll."

Lawsuit Attacks Fla. School Funding - Central Florida News 13

Lawsuit Attacks Fla. School Funding - Central Florida News 13:

"TALLAHASSEE -- Of all the things state government pays for, there's one that's more important than everything else -- education.

The Florida Constitution requires lawmakers to make it their top priority, but critics said that's not happening. The question is headed to court.

As if two young kids don't keep Courtney McHugh busy enough, she's got something more to worry about -- their education.

'I think schools don't get enough funding,' McHugh said. 'I think the teachers don't get paid enough, as well, you know, because they help our children grow. They help them learn different things, and if they don't get the money, then what's the incentive for them to be there and help our kids?'"

Review finds state failing to maintain small classes - California - SignOnSanDiego.com

Review finds state failing to maintain small classes - California - SignOnSanDiego.com:

"Most of California’s largest school districts are increasing class sizes in kindergarten through third grade, eroding the most expensive education reform in state history.
California Watch, a nonprofit investigative reporting group, surveyed the 30 largest K-12 school districts in the state and found that many are pushing class sizes to 24 in some or all of the early grades. Other districts have raised class sizes to 30 students — reverting to levels not seen in more than a decade.

The changes at more than two dozen of the districts surveyed have parents and teachers concerned that the academic performance of millions of children will suffer.
California ranks 48th in the nation in student-teacher ratios. New measures are in place that will allow districts to raise class sizes even higher and still collect more than $1 billion in state aid — money originally intended to reward schools that kept class sizes low."

State's school funding process is failing -- latimes.com

State's school funding process is failing -- latimes.com:

"Anyone who has spent time in or around government, from the deeply embedded bureaucrat to the young policy wonk, knows that there are two important issues in funding a public program.

One, is it getting enough money? Two, is the money being spent wisely?

On both counts, California's method of financing its schools gets a big fat F. On a per-pupil basis, our schools are among the most poorly funded in the country, and no one can be sure that the money they do get serves its purpose.

Ask those who have devoted time to examining the system: The way this state doles out money to K-12 education isn't merely inefficient and ineffective, it's insane."