Friday, December 18, 2009

Latin American Herald Tribune - Minority Parents Force Chicago Schools to Extend Magnet Registration

Latin American Herald Tribune - Minority Parents Force Chicago Schools to Extend Magnet Registration:

"CHICAGO – The Chicago Public Schools extended the enrollment period in the city’s magnet schools in the face of protests by African-American and Hispanic parents.

Instead of Dec. 18, parents will have until Jan. 6 to register their children in the 70 specialized magnet and other special schools for gifted students in the public school system, CPS said in a statement.

Meanwhile, education authorities will work out the details of the new enrollment system that will supersede the rules on racial balance that prevailed for 29 years in the public education system in Chicago."

The Associated Press: Calif. Senate passes new compromise education bill

The Associated Press: Calif. Senate passes new compromise education bill:

"SACRAMENTO, Calif. — The state Senate on Thursday approved legislation that would clear the way for California to compete in a $4.3 billion school funding competition from the Obama administration, but the state's chances of securing a slice of the money remained in limbo.

After late-night negotiations lasting several days, state Sen. Gloria Romero, D-Los Angeles, introduced new legislation Thursday that attempted to forge a compromise between the two houses on education reform. Divisions remained, however, and Romero said she would work through the holidays to complete a bill with broad support and which Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger would sign."

New York Students Predict Hardship if Free Fares Are Cut - NYTimes.com

New York Students Predict Hardship if Free Fares Are Cut - NYTimes.com:

"When Alejandro Velazquez, 15, was selecting a high school last year, he decided on Washington Irving in Manhattan because of its strong Spanish-English bilingual program. It was a 40-minute trip from his home in the Bronx, but his mother assented, in part because he could travel free."

His family’s calculus, he said, would have been different had he needed to pay $40 a month or more to get to and from school, a reality that will begin next fall if budget cuts passed by the Metropolitan Transportation Authorityboard on Wednesday are carried out. His mother, an immigrant from Ecuador, works as a cook in a Bronx restaurant to support him and his 10-year-old brother, and there is little cash to spare.
“If I had to pay for the MetroCard, my mother would have preferred a school closer to me — there’s one right down the block from our house,” he said.
The cuts to the student subsidies for the MetroCards are not yet final. The M.T.A. board will have a public comment period over the

N.Y. must get in the race: $700 million in aid hangs on speedy school reform by Albany

New York State has just one month to get into the running for as much as $700 million in federal education aid - and damn well better make sure it does.

Gov. Paterson and the Legislature face a Jan. 19 deadline for enacting sweeping school reform legislation to become eligible for a share of the Obama administration's Race to the Top money.

This is one task that must not die by Albany dysfunction. There will be hell to pay should the Legislature reject the smart, necessary measures that are required for qualifying or fail to act in time.

Charter school's success may not be enough -- Page 1 -- Times Union - Albany NY

Charter school's success may not be enough -- Page 1 -- Times Union - Albany NY:

"ALBANY -- Years of academic improvement may not be enough to save the New Covenant Charter School."

Despite rapidly rising test scores, the school has not met all the academic terms of its last-ditch reprieve, according to a preliminary report from the State University of New York Charter Schools Institute. That could result in the institute recommending to the SUNY Board of Trustees that the school be closed when they vote next month.

School officials this week pointed to a marked improvement in student scores on the state's standardized English and math exams since Victory Schools Inc. took over the troubled institution in 2006. Much has changed at New Covenant since then, with an increased enrollment and a stability in leadership that has been elusive in a difficult 10-year history, which has seen the school on the brink of closure a number of times. In fact, the business card for Principal Jecrois Jean-Baptiste, who has a reputation for turning around troubled schools and moved here to do the same for New Covenant, now reads "The Miracle on Lark Street."

"This is a school where great things can still happen, especially in a neighborhood that is used to things closing," Jean-Baptiste said.

But it remains to be seen if his hard work will be enough to convince the institute or the SUNY trustees who, on Jan. 15, will vote on whether New Covenant deserves yet another chance. SUNY's Charter School Institute has been hailed as a success by Washington because of its tendency to close troubled schools.

L.A. schools chief orders weak new teachers ousted -- latimes.com

L.A. schools chief orders weak new teachers ousted -- latimes.com:

"Los Angeles schools Supt. Ramon C. Cortines ordered administrators Thursday to weed out ineffective new teachers before they become permanent, acknowledging that the nation's second-largest school system has largely failed to adequately evaluate teacher performance.

'This district can be rightly criticized for the promotion of ineffective teachers over the years. That is about to change,' Cortines said. 'We do not owe poor performers a job.'

Taking aim at weak probationary teachers now could spare the district from firing others who are more effective but have slightly less experience next summer when there will probably be another round of layoffs."

We Were Born – It Just Wasn’t Yesterday: How NYCSA Places Ideology Before the Interests of Charter Schools | Edwize

We Were Born – It Just Wasn’t Yesterday: How NYCSA Places Ideology Before the Interests of Charter Schools | Edwize:

"Representatives of the New York Charter School Association have been lobbying against New York State receiving Race to the Top funds, elected officials in Albany and Washington DC have told the UFT. If successful, these efforts would deny funds for important educational reforms to both district and charter schools in New York — at a time when all of these schools are facing draconian cuts in funding.

But NYCSA — and the allied New York City Charter School Center — are once again placing their ideological agenda above the interests of the schools they claim to represent. Their agenda to eliminate the limits on charter school expansion in New York and create a completely deregulated, unfettered charter school sector, such as that in Arizona and"

Researchers Offer Dueling Views on Tracking - Inside School Research - Education Week

Researchers Offer Dueling Views on Tracking - Inside School Research - Education Week:

"In the late 1980s, when I began writing about education, there were lively debates over whether students should be 'tracked' into different academic classes based on their abilities. Some things never change.

The perennial nature of the tracking debate became obvious this week after the Fordham Institute published a report by Tom Loveless on tracking in Massachusetts middle schools. The study's bottom-line finding was that schools with two or three levels of math instruction tended to have higher numbers of students scoring near the top on state math exams than those with only one math track."

Thursday, December 17, 2009

Greenacres coming to Gravesend - United Federation of Teachers

Greenacres coming to Gravesend

Nov 26, 2009 11:22 AM

Edible Schoolyard project at PS 216, Brooklyn

Some of the team behind the project — (from left) Sasha Loberg of the Friends Committee of Edible Schoolyard New York City; Assistant Principal Susan Glazer; Edible Schoolyard President Brett Williams; John Lyons, film producer and “principal for a day” at PS 216 who helped bring the program to the school; UFT District 20 Representative Judy Gerowitz; Principal Celia Kaplinksy, a strong advocate for innovative programs; and Integrated Curriculum and Instruction Network Leader Wendy Karp.

The asphalt playground at PS 216 in Gravesend, Brooklyn, is about to go from ugly ducking to swan, as it is transformed into a quarter-acre organic farm, the likes of which have never been seen before in New York City.

We’re talking a “four-seasons greenhouse” with removable roof to extend the growing season year ’round; a “ramada” for children to sit in with photovoltaic panels that convert solar radiation into electricity, a roof system that collects rainwater, a kitchen classroom for cooking their garden bounty, and more.

“This is a fabulous opportunity,” veteran Chapter Leader Kathy Klein said. “In our school, we have children who don’t know that food doesn’t come out of a box or can. There are vegetables and fruits they’ve never seen. They’ll have the opportunity to work in the garden, plant, harvest, cook and eat what they grow.”

This will be the first Edible Schoolyard in New York, and it’s part of the Edible Schoolyard Foundation created by visionary chef/eat local guru Alice Waters, of Chez Panisse fame. Her first schoolyard garden was in an underserved school in her Berkeley hometown; another was recently started in New Orleans. Now Brooklyn is poised to carry on the model.

But first the project had to overcome some neighborhood resistance. There were concerns about rodents being attracted to the garden, and the idea of raising chickens didn’t go over too well, either.

This is what PS 216’s Edible Schoolyard will look like when completed. For more information and renderings of the project, visit www.esynyc.org.

“We went to the community board, the principal and myself, at the end of September, to speak about the project,” Klein said. “They wound up voting in favor of it, after seeing the presentation.”

The community will also be invited to participate in the garden, she said, adding that with all the diversity in the neighborhood, “it will be a tremendous learning experience.”

All aspects of the curriculum will relate to the edible garden, from math and measurements to science, social studies, reading and writing, Klein said.

“For students to have the experience of seeing a strawberry grow from the ground, that will be new,” she said. They may recognize the flavors, but for many city kids, how fruits and vegetables grow is something of a mystery.

PS 216 houses a diverse population of 471 students in grades K-5, with 100 percent of the students qualifying for free lunch, and 16 percent English language learners.

The design behind the project will be just as innovative as the project itself: the award-winning WORK Architecture Company, which recently designed the Museum of Modern Art’s Public Farm 1 in Queens, will be designing the sustainable systems.

“It’s a wonderful, innovative idea to bring gardening to Brooklyn schoolchildren,” said Judy Gerowitz, UFT District 21 representative.

Sac City schools chief: ‘Take risks for kids’

Sac City schools chief: ‘Take risks for kids’

lesson of his first 100 days

Superintendent Raymond presents findings and

recommendations; sets new course for district

Sac City schools chief: ‘Take risks for kids’ lesson of his first 100 days

Superintendent Raymond presents findings and recommendations; sets new course for district

After spending his first 100 days on the job “listening and learning,” Sacramento City Unified School District Superintendent Jonathan P. Raymond will present his findings and recommendations to the Board of Education at about 8 p.m. on Thursday, Dec. 17 at the Serna Center, 5735 24th Ave.

Raymond will outline four main focus areas for his superintendency and define his vision of fundamental change for Sac City Unified. “The potential to excel exists here,” Raymond says. “There is a lot of good occurring in the district, but good is not good enough. More need to be done to be a truly great district for our children. The best advice I received during my listening tour was not to be afraid to take risks for kids—to be bold. I’m going to follow that advice.”

After spending time at 83 of the district’s 91 schools (some more than once) and meeting with hundreds of students, teachers, administrators, parents, community members, and district staff, the Superintendent will focus on four key areas:

• ensure a strong principal in every school

• ensure a highly skilled teacher in each classroom who is able to tailor instruction to the needs of students

• engage parents and community participation in the district’s schools

• share information with the community to measure instruction for continuous improvement

Raymond has already announced a new literacy effort to increase reading and writing skills as the basic building blocks for improved educational opportunity and academic excellence. “We must educate our students to succeed in a challenging world economy. The only way to do this is by graduating students prepared to excel in college and careers to meet the demands of the new millennium.”

For reporters: Open session for the Board of Education meeting will begin at 6:30. The “Superintendent’s Report” is scheduled at 8:13 p.m. as Item 8.5 on the agenda, but the time may vary. Please call Maria L. Lopez at (916)752-3705 if an interview is desired.

14 States Fail Gates' Race to the Top Test - Politics K-12 - Education Week

With the Race to the Top deadline just around the corner, education policy wonks are already sizing up the competition to figure out who's already in the lead, and who isn't.

Vegas odds probably aren't favoring these 14 states, which didn't meet the Gates Foundation's litmus test for qualifying for RttT technical assistance: Delaware, Hawaii, Indiana, Kansas, Maryland, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, New Hampshire, Oregon, South Carolina, South Dakota, and Vermont.

After hearing grumbles from state officials, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundationopened up its technical assistance planning grants to all states. Twenty-four applied, and 10 won these Gates-funded grants of up to $250,000 each, which were technically awarded by the New Venture Fund, a grant-making middleman of sorts.

We'll get to the winning states in a minute.

The Educated Guess � Debt service to crowd out education spending – and everything else

Debt service to crowd out education spending – and everything else

Posted in Uncategorized

Over the years, Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O’Connell has developed a sixth sense for steering clear of political potholes. So it was puzzling to hear him call for $9.9 billion worth of bonds for school construction one day after state Treasurer Bill Lockyer warned that California is already bonded up to its eyeballs — at its peril.

“There is an obvious need to improve school facilities throughout California, and we cannot afford to wait to meet this need,” O’Connell said in a press release after testifying at a Senate hearing on school facilities.
But wait we probably will.

According to Lockyer’s lastest report on debt, by 2013, a record $10 billion in interest and principal on state debt will eat up a whopping 11 percent of estimated $91 billion in state revenue. Most of the money will pay off general obligation bonds, but more than $2 billion will cover short-term borrowing that bailed the state out of this year’s financial crisis. Then there’s the $11 billion in water bonds that the governor and legislators will ask voters to pass in November. The state would start paying them off, too.

Debt will continue to squeeze out money for education, state parks, child care and all sorts of good things for years to come. Debt service totaled only $2.5 billion a decade ago and jumped to $6 billion this year, a 143 percent increase while revenue this year was

PBS NewsHour Online Interview with Secretary Arne Duncan – ED.gov Blog

PBS NewsHour Online Interview with Secretary Arne Duncan – ED.gov Blog:

"Following his live town hall webcast with students from across the country, Secretary Arne Duncan stopped by “The Rundown,” the new PBS NewsHour online webcast. The Secretary was interviewed in the NewsHour newsroom by correspondent Hari Sreenivasan.

Interview topics included the initiative on financial literacy that Secretary Duncan and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner announced that morning, and Race To The Top.
Watch the complete interview."

Education Week: Filtering Fixes

Education Week: Filtering Fixes:

"Attempting to use online social-networking tools, read blogs, or see multimedia presentations on a classroom computer can generate a message that’s become all too familiar in many American schools: Access Denied.

So what teachers and students in Trussville, Ala., are doing on the Internet might be considered illicit activity in other districts across the country. Lessons in the 4,100-student district near Birmingham include YouTube videos and film trailers, Internet chats with peers in Nigeria or award-winning children’s authors, even blogging sessions and Web research on open search engines such as Google."

Spotlight On: Internet Filtering

+ Filtering Fixes

Some school systems are bucking the trend by expanding access to online resources, including social-networking sites.
• Check out a list of filtering providers. (Education Week)

+ Online Safety Law Seen as Teaching Barrier

The Children's Internet Protection Act requires schools and libraries to filter Internet content for students. But what does it really require schools to do? (Digital Education blog)

voiceofsandiego.org | Alpert Goes to China

voiceofsandiego.org | News. Investigation. Analysis. Conversation. Intelligence.:

"Alpert Goes to China

I'm fleeing the country!

Well, sort of. I have some friends in Shanghai and Hong Kong I've been meaning to visit. And my editor told me I reeeeaally had to take some time off this year. Time flies when you're writing about schools!

So for the next two weeks, I'll be in China. The Schooled blog is going into hibernation, and judging by the temperatures in Shanghai, so will I.

I'll be back in the swing of things and ready to chase down the answers to all your burning educational questions in 2010. In the meantime, enjoy the fine work of my colleagues! See you next decade.

-- EMILY ALPERT"

AmeriCorps Team is Working Locally to Better Community — The Rancho Cordova Post

AmeriCorps Team is Working Locally to Better Community — The Rancho Cordova Post:

"A team from AmeriCorps National Civilian Community Corps (NCCC) is working locally with the Folsom Cordova Community Partnership through the end of December to help enhance the education, health, and well-being of Folsom and Rancho Cordova’s children and families in need.

The NCCC team is assisting the FCCP with holiday events such as an annual toy drive; a Thanksgiving event for families and friends of the Partnership; and A Taste of December, the organization’s largest fundraiser, in which guests buy tickets and sample food and drink from a variety of local establishments. The team is also assisting with the organization’s day-to-day tasks, such as running after-school activities for young teenagers, watching toddlers in Play Care, and helping out with various office tasks."

CPR: News Story | Commentary: Restore the Legislature - End Term Limits

COMMENTARY: RESTORE THE LEGISLATURE - END TERM LIMITS

Another Assembly speakership battle is underway. Commentator Ginger Rutland says, for the majority of California residents, it really doesn’t matter who wins.

By: Ginger Rutland

Fri Dec 11, 2009

Listen

Aired 12/11/2009 on Morning Edition

(Sacramento, CA)

The contest for Assembly Speaker pits freshman Assemblyman John Perez against two term Assemblyman Kevin de Leon. There’s not a lot of difference between the two. Both are from Los Angeles. Both were union organizers before they came to the Assembly.

The only people who really care who wins are other assembly members. The speaker hands out the big offices, key committee assignments and chairmanships, all perks useful for legislators who want to move on to the next level – the state senate, Congress, statewide office or a lucrative lobbying job when they are termed out.

Term limits have diminished the power of the speaker and the Legislature. Politicians no longer build careers there. They don’t have time to acquire institutional knowledge, expertise or loyalty. Campaign contributions no longer flow through the speaker. Other than denying someone a big office, there is little a speaker can do to coax or threaten a member to vote for the budget, or any other important bill.

Where did the power go? To the third house – that army of unelected lobbyists who represent powerful special interests.

Efforts to reform California’s dysfunctional government will fail if they do not do something to restore the legislative branch of government, including the speaker. At minimum, that means ending term limits.

Teacher Magazine: Does Grading Bias Apply to Education Reports?

Does Grading Bias Apply to Education Reports?

In my efforts to increase student interest in understanding probability, I often do a magic trick where I repeatedly shuffle a deck of cards and have three different students pick a card. Using the counting principle, students see that if we went through this process more than 132,000 times, theoretically I would guess the selected card of all three students only once. Of course, since I know how to trick my students into selecting the three cards I want them to select, I get the answers I want every time.

Last month, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the American Enterprise Institute, and the Center for American Progress published a damning report on education titled Leaders and Laggards that I believe uses similar sleight of hand. The report is presented as a fair, research-based, and data-supported assessment to determine how states are doing in innovation of education. What I see under the surface, however, is a strong bias for Teach for America and alternative-certification programs and against experienced teachers, teacher tenure, and teacher unions.

The report’s attention-getting strategy is to assign grades, with states receiving individual letter grades for seven broad educational categories. Each category comprises several indicators that are given numerical values and tabulated to produce a numerical score for the category, which is then converted to a letter grade.

But the data used in Leaders and Laggards’ seems highly selective. For example, one indicator under the “Staffing: Hiring and Evaluation” category is the state’s use of “national programs to recruit nontraditional teachers,” namely Teach for America, The New Teacher Project, and Troops to Teachers. A state’s score for this indicator is influenced heavily by whether or not it uses teachers from the TNTP and TFA. If it does, it gets 100 points (an A); if it doesn’t, it gets 59. (That score is then combined with a rating given for its relative number of Troops

Education: Learning styles debunked

Education: Learning Styles Debunked

ScienceDaily (Dec. 17, 2009) — Are you a verbal learner or a visual learner? Chances are, you've pegged yourself or your children as either one or the other and rely on study techniques that suit your individual learning needs. And you're not alone -- for more than 30 years, the notion that teaching methods should match a student's particular learning style has exerted a powerful influence on education. The long-standing popularity of the learning styles movement has in turn created a thriving commercial market amongst researchers, educators, and the general public.

The wide appeal of the idea that some students will learn better when material is presented visually and that others will learn better when the material is presented verbally, or even in some other way, is evident in the vast number of learning-style tests and teaching guides available for purchase and used in schools. But does scientific research really support the existence of different learning styles, or the hypothesis that people learn better when taught in a way that matches their own unique style?

Unfortunately, the answer is no, according to a major new report published this month in Psychological Science in the Public Interest, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. The report, authored by a team of eminent researchers in the psychology of learning -- Hal Pashler (University of San Diego), Mark McDaniel (Washington University in St. Louis), Doug Rohrer (University of South Florida), and Robert Bjork (University of California, Los Angeles) -- reviews the existing literature on learning styles and finds that although numerous studies have purported to show the existence of different kinds of learners (such as "auditory learners" and "visual learners"), those studies have not used the type of randomized research designs that would make their findings credible.

Nearly all of the studies that purport to provide evidence for learning styles fail to satisfy key criteria for scientific validity. Any experiment designed to test the learning-styles hypothesis would need to classify learners into categories and then randomly assign the learners to use one of several different learning methods, and the participants would need to take the same test at the end of the experiment. If there is truth to the idea that learning styles and teaching styles should mesh, then learners with a given style, say visual-spatial, should learn better with instruction that meshes with that style. The authors found that of the very large number of studies claiming to support the learning-styles hypothesis, very few used this type of research design. Of those that did, some provided evidence flatly contradictory to this meshing hypothesis, and the few findings in line with the meshing idea did not assess popular learning-style schemes.

No less than 71 different models of learning styles have been proposed over the years. Most have no doubt been created with students' best interests in mind, and to create more suitable environments for learning. But psychological research has not found that people learn differently, at least not in the ways learning-styles proponents claim. Given the lack of scientific evidence, the authors argue that the currently widespread use of learning-style tests and teaching tools is a wasteful use of limited educational resources.

Between Two Worlds: How Young Latinos Come of Age in America - Pew Hispanic Center

Between Two Worlds: How Young Latinos Come of Age in America - Pew Hispanic Center:

"Hispanics are the largest and youngest minority group in the United States. One- in-five schoolchildren is Hispanic. One-in-four newborns is Hispanic. Never before in this country's history has a minority ethnic group made up so large a share of the youngest Americans. By force of numbers alone, the kinds of adults these young Latinos become will help shape the kind of society America becomes in the 21st century.

This report takes an in-depth look at Hispanics who are ages 16 to 25, a phase of life when young people make choices that-for better and worse-set their path to adulthood. For this particular ethnic group, it is also a time when they navigate the intricate, often porous borders between the two cultures they inhabit-American and Latin American."

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