The DC VOICE Ostrich

The DC VOICE Ostrich:


"U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan’s Listening Tour makes a stop at DC VOICE’s final meeting as part of the Ready Schools Project District-Wide

Washington, DC— In Ward 5, Luke C. Moore Academy Senior High School will be the setting for DC VOICE’s final town hall meeting of the November Ready Schools Project Town Hall Series, with the U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan joining the conversation. The Secretary has been touring the nation on a Listening and Learning tour to meet with members of various communities, and has chosen DC VOICE’s Ward 5 town hall as a way to engage D.C. community members’ thoughts and concerns regarding public education in the District."

The Ready Schools Project Town Hall Series kicked off in Ward 4 on November 9th with Councilmember Bowser and State Board member Sekou Biddle. The Ward 6 town hall on November 10th included Councilmember Tommy Wells and State Board President Lisa Raymond.

And this past Saturday, November 14th, Councilmember Yvette Alexander and State Board member Dorothy Douglas joined us for our Ward 7 and 8 town hall. During her remarks at the Ward 7 and 8 town hall, Councilmember Alexander proclaimed, “I take the information DC VOICE provides seriously…[w]hen I hear from DC VOICE, it truly is the voice of the residents in D.C.”

These town hall meetings allow community members to learn current school data collected through DC VOICE’s 6th Annual Ready Schools Project where over 100 school principals were interviewed by almost 200 trained community members. Secretary Duncan will be on hand to discuss federal education initiatives, and will join the smaller breakout table discussions during the town hall meeting.

He will also be joined by Ward 5 Councilmember Harry Thomas, Jr., the Ward 5 Council on Education, as well as other education groups in the District as co-hosts for this meeting.

Palo Alto Struggles After Rash of Teen Train Suicides - ABC News

Palo Alto Struggles After Rash of Teen Train Suicides - ABC News

A cluster of violent teen suicides in an affluent California town has officials scrambling to figure out why four kids from the same high school took their own lives and how to prevent others from doing the same.

The town of Palo Alto, Calif., is struggling to help it's children after four Gunn High School teens in the last six months have comitted suicide by jumping in front of an oncoming train.(ABC News)

The death of a 16-year-old boy Monday night in Palo Alto was believed to be the fourth suicide of a Gunn High School student since May. In all four cases, the teenagers jumped into the path of an oncoming commuter train operated by Caltrain.

"Parents are eager for information," said Joan Baran, clinical services director of the Children's Health Council in Palo Alto. "I think parents are wanting to know what they can do."

Information about the teenagers and the particulars of their deaths are being closely guarded by school and police officials who fear a public spectacle will only encourage more unstable students to take their lives.

"It's very difficult and it's very sensitive," Caltrain spokeswoman Tasha Bartholomew said today.

The Dark Side of America’s Achievement Culture | Race to Nowhere

The Dark Side of America’s Achievement Culture Race to Nowhere

Sacramento Press / Good Advice for Young Women

Sacramento Press / Good Advice for Young Women:

"The California Governor and First Lady's Conference on Women, now known simply as The Women's Conference, is the nation's premier forum for women.
The goal of the Women's Conference is to transform women inside and out - and then empower them to help transform our world as Architects of Change.

I attended the Women's Conference, spoke with Leaders, and asked them what advice they have for young Women to be successful in life. Check out my video."

Folsom Cordova Unified Prepares for School Closures | News10.net | Sacramento, California | Local News

Folsom Cordova Unified Prepares for School Closures News10.net Sacramento, California Local News:

"RANCHO CORDOVA, CA - To help deal with a 10-million-dollar budget shortfall next year, the Folsom Cordova Unified School District says it needs to close schools.
Monday night was the last of 2 school closure forums.

Parents, students, and staff packed into a school auditorium to listen to the different proposals. The most prominent recommendation so far, to close two schools in Rancho Cordova-- Cordova Lane and Riverview Elementary schools. Another school was also discussed-- Williamson Elementary School.

The district says the school closures are in the Rancho Cordova area this year because that's where the most significant decline in enrollment is. The district will also be looking at the Folsom area schools next year."

State Budget Deficit Now Projected at $21 Billion | California Progress Report

State Budget Deficit Now Projected at $21 Billion California Progress Report:

"Despite massive permanent spending cuts and some temporary tax increases made this past year, California’s budget shortfall is projected to swell to $21 billion by June 30, 2011, the end of the 2010-2011 State Budget year in a new report issued this morning by the Legislative Analyst Office – the non-partisan agency that reviews and monitors budget issues for the Legislature.

Adding to the bad news, the report also projects continued budget shortfalls of billions of dollars for the next several years especially when federal stimulus dollars and revenues from the temporary tax increases end."

The Educated Guess » Career academies, where a-g and job training meet

The Educated Guess » Career academies, where a-g and job training meet

Career academies, where a-g and job training meet

Posted in A to G Curriculum

The polarized arguments were familiar this week at the Silicon Valley Education Foundation forum in San Jose on a-g, the set of 15 courses required for admission to a four-year state school.

The establishment of a-g as a district’s default curriculum has opened up opportunities for students who never imagined themselves college-capable. If instituted with academic supports for struggling students, an a-g curriculum will not lead to a higher dropout rate but will offer more students, especially minority children, higher level courses. That’s been the San Jose Unified experience, Linda Murray, the former superintendent who instituted a-g, said. Making a-g standard could avoid what Neal Finkelstein, a senior researcher at WestEd, described as the “heartbreak” of many seniors who discover they’re a few credits short of being eligible to go to college.

The spread of a-g has narrowed the academic curriculum, San Jose State engineering professor Seth Bates said, and all but destroyed once-thriving career technical education programs that gave students hard skills for real jobs in electronics, construction and manufacturing. A-g has not contributed to a higher rate of college attendance and graduation. It has led to more than half of high school students entering the workforce unprepared, without skills.

But Finkelstein and other speakers also agreed it’s a false dichotomy.

Phantom districts in Texas receive millions in 'stimulus' | Texas on the Potomac | Chron.com - Houston Chronicle

Phantom districts in Texas receive millions in 'stimulus' Texas on the Potomac Chron.com - Houston Chronicle:

"According to the Obama administration's latest count, the President's economic stimulus package has created 45 jobs in Texas' 58th congressional district and 30 jobs in the state's 91st district.

The White House's recovery.gov web site declares that Texas' 52nd district received exactly $8,937,289 in stimulus funds, while the 68th district has had precisely $310,963 funneled into it.

Trouble is, none of these congressional districts exist."

In its latest computer glitch, the Obama administration's much-ballyhooed accounting system for the $1.2 trillion stimulus law detailed government spending in 39 congressional districts in Texas -- a state that, in reality, has 32 congressional districts. More than $14 million in mystery money is attributed to seven phantom congressional districts, including the mysterious and fictional District 00.

Nationally, the recovery.gov site has mistakenly attributed $6.4 billion in stimulus spending to 440 non-existent districts in all 50 states, the District of Columbia and even four American territories, according to an analysis by the nonpartisan government oversight group watchdog.org.

What Made Michelle Obama Anxious and Nervous -- Politics Daily

What Made Michelle Obama Anxious and Nervous -- Politics Daily:

"First Lady Michelle Obama revisited a stressful period of her youth on Monday, opening up to teen girls at a Denver mentoring event when asked about her views of standardized testing.

Mrs. Obama used the question to talk about her own insecurities and anxieties about taking tests, focusing on her time as a high school student in Chicago.

It's well known that Mrs. Obama was a high achiever. She went to a top public high school with selective enrollment, then to Princeton, and then to Harvard Law School. However, a continuing theme when she talks about her life is how she had her own struggles to achieve success."

Accountable Talk: Randi Reduhhhhx

Accountable Talk: Randi Reduhhhhx:

"In a stunning move that shows how much Michael Mulgrew learned from Randi Weingarten, the UFT delegate assembly today authorized the union to file for an impasse. That means, of course, that the union can send the matter to PERB to try to hammer out a settlement.

This is the same process by which, if you recall, we worked out the wonderful 2005 contract, where we gave away just about all our hard earned contractual rights in order to have a longer school day. It wasn't all a disaster, however. In exchange for 6% more time, we got a 6% raise. Yessir, those Unity types are really on the ball."

NYC Public School Parents: Is an Ill Wind Blowing Through NYC Public High Schools?

NYC Public School Parents: Is an Ill Wind Blowing Through NYC Public High Schools?:

"Even as the recent round of DOE Progress Reports has generated another wave of criticisms over Lake Wobegon-style grade inflation (with only one school in the city getting an F and over three-quarters grabbing A's), the just-released high school report cards contain some serious, and considerably more negative, news.

As Jennifer Medina and Robert Gebeloff reported in their Monday (11/16) New York Times article, 'More New York High Schools Get A's:'"

The school environment grades, which are based on attendance and results of student, parent and teacher surveys, and make up 15 percent of the grade, showed the steepest decline. This year, 55 high schools received a D or an F in school environment, compared with 12 last year.

Thus, in the one area where students vote with their feet (attendance) and the public -- parents, teachers, and students -- have some direct input via surveys tailored to each of those constituencies, the feedback from high schools is not happy news for Chancellor Klein. And the picture is actually far worse than the Times reported. As is too often the case, their "analysis" picked a piece of easy, low-hanging fruit while eschewing a more substantive and informative presentation.

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.