Monday, February 8, 2010

Barack Obama No Child Left Behind Education Arne Duncan teachers unions Race to the Top | PressDemocrat.com

President Barack Obama had been getting high marks in his first year in office for what seemed to be an insightful approach to education reform. Too bad he flunked the final.

Philadelphia Public School Notebook

Notes from the news, Feb. 8

Submitted by Erika Owens on Mon, 02/08/2010 - 10:06 Posted in Notes from the news | Permalink

Philly Schools Closed Monday NBC Philadelphia
Enjoy the day off. Good luck digging out!

Pa. bill would expand overhaul of schoolsThe Inquirer
It would not affect Philadelphia, but would expand outside management in struggling districts throughout the state.

Former charter school administrator files whistleblower suit The Inquirer
The former Philadelphia Academy Charter School employee says she was improperly fired.

Ackerman excited about Promise Academies The Notebook blog
Promise Academies are Renaissance Schools that would be managed out of Ackerman's office.

The Next Steps: A Campaign to End Violence in Our Schools Philadelphia Education Justice blog
Next step is the announcement of a campaign at Wednesday's SRC meeting.

Phila. Public Schools Train Science Professionals to Teach KYW

Struggles at School of the Future The Notebook blog

EduCon 2.2 Reflections - What Do You Think? Practical Theory blog

I Love This Job: A Follow Up Philly Teacher blog

More On Language Immersion Philly School Search blog

voiceofsandiego.org | News. Investigation. Analysis. Conversation. Intelligence. - Southwestern College Pushed to the Brink by Brutal Power Struggle

voiceofsandiego.org | News. Investigation. Analysis. Conversation. Intelligence. - Southwestern College Pushed to the Brink by Brutal Power Struggle:

"Andrew Rempt was correcting composition papers at his home when the doorbell rang.

Earlier that day, the Southwestern College English professor had stood with students protesting against class cuts. Now, the college's human resource director was standing on his doorstep alongside an armed campus police officer. Their message: Rempt and three other professors were banned from campus that night.

Three of them later learned they were being investigated for inciting students and not cooperating with campus police.

The incident enflamed the already volatile relationship between the South Bay community college's employees and Superintendent Raj K. Chopra. It has been an almost constant battle since Chopra was hired in August 2007, and there is no sign of letting up, even after the state's accreditation agency put the college on probation on Tuesday."

National Journal Online -- Education Experts -- Are Charter Schools A Civil Rights Failure?

National Journal Online -- Education Experts -- Are Charter Schools A Civil Rights Failure?:

"Are Charter Schools A Civil Rights Failure?

A study released last week by the Civil Rights Project at the University of California, Los Angeles, concluded that although charter schools are a political success, they are a civil rights failure. The report found that charter schools are more racially homogenized than traditional public schools and asserted that those in the western United States are havens for white re-segregation.

Is this a fair characterization of the charter school movement?

-- Eliza Krigman, NationalJournal.com"

RESPONDED ON FEBRUARY 8, 2010 10:05 AM

Strategies of the 1970s have not worked

Greg Richmond

President & CEO, National Association of Charter School Authorizers (NACSA)

RESPONDED ON FEBRUARY 8, 2010 9:35 AM

Disappointing Report

Nelson Smith

President & CEO, National Alliance for Public Charter Schools

RESPONDED ON FEBRUARY 8, 2010 8:59 AM

Equity Doesn't Equal Integration

Eliza Krigman

NationalJournal.com

Closure, reorganization on Modesto school board agenda - Featured Stories - Modbee.com

Monday's Modesto City Schools board meeting is full of compelling items — closing Pearson Elementary School next school year, appointing an associate superintendent of curriculum, reorganizing district office administration and starting a dual-language program.

All are important decisions as the district prepares to slice at least $25 million from it's $250 million budget for next school year.

Modesto City Schools would be the third in Stanislaus County to close a school. Stanislaus Union and Empire Union districts closed one each for this school year.

Modesto Bee - ALISON YIN/ayin@modbee.com Ethel Pearson Elementary School is set to close in Modesto, Calif., Saturday, Feb. 6, 2010.

Next to the district office in west Modesto, Pearson Elementary enrolls 280 students in kindergarten and first grades, according to 2008-09 data. It's one of the district's smallest and oldest campuses.

Students would attend Franklin Elementary School, half a mile away. About 670 students in grades two through six attend Franklin.

Officials have met with parents and staff at both schools and formed a steering committee that will continue to meet as the schools consolidate, according to a staff report.

The cost to combine the schools is about $12,000, the report says, but it does not include an estimate on how much the district would save by closing Pearson.

The average costs of running an elementary school are about $400,000, but Pearson is smaller, so savings likely would be less.

Superintendent Arturo Flores' plan to reorganize the district office to consolidate jobs and save money comes to the board for a second time. When last discussed Jan. 19, employee unions raised some objections to the district's figures.

Jerry Large | Learning not to copy China | Seattle Times Newspaper

Learning not to copy China

Could it be we worry too much about China? I'd say so if that fretting is contributing to an erosion of our own strengths, an argument I'm hearing often.

Jerry Large

Seattle Times staff columnist

Yong Zhao

Could it be we worry too much about China?

I'd say so if that fretting is contributing to an erosion of our own strengths, an argument I'm hearing often.

Yong Zhao, an education professor at Michigan State, will speak about that Wednesday in Seattle. (Visitwww.evergreenschool.org to register.)

He decries efforts to replicate the kind of education kids get in India and China with national standards and an intense focus on math and science at the expense of arts and the humanities.

He has a new book, "Catching up or Leading the Way: American Education in the Age of Globalization."

The Educated Guess Data don’t tell full story in charter ’segregation’ study

The Educated Guess
Data don’t tell full story in charter ’segregation’ study

Posted in Charters

Anti-charter school boards and superintendents no doubt are bookmarking a report that found that charter schools nationwide and in California are more racially and ethnically segregated than traditional public schools. They’ll cite the study, by the Civil Rights Project at UCLA, as a rationale for denying a charter application or creating new demographic obstacles, under the guise of integration, that many urban charter schools cannot overcome.
That would be terrible for minority families who choose charters as an alternative to their neighborhood failing schools.
(Read more and comment on this post)

Education - Everything you need to know about the world of education.

Education- Everything you need to know about the world of education.

Up to Montgomery County principals to challenge fliers

I asked Montgomery County schools officials to explain who is responsible for vetting the fliers that non-profit groups are allowed to send home with students four times a year.

The issue arose when my colleague Michael Birnbaum reported about fliers that were passed out to some Montgomery County high school students from an organization that insists that therapy can turn gays into heterosexuals.

The fliers, from the group Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays and Gays, were distributed at Churchill High School and other schools last week under a district regulation that allows non-profit groups to distribute information that is not deemed to be hate speech.

Continue reading this post »

U-Va. cheats IB students

Some days when Alexis Robertson was in the heavy-duty International Baccalaureate program at South Lakes High School in Fairfax County, she arrived at 7 a.m. and didn’t leave until 8 p.m. The 4,000-word IB paper she wrote was longer and more detailed than anything she has had so far as freshman at the University of Virginia. She passed six college-level IB exams, did 150 hours of community service and received the IB Diploma, one of the highest honors bestowed by American high schools.

Yet U-Va. gave her only nine college credits. She said a friend who had a similar load of Advanced Placement courses (a similar but older college-level program for high schoolers) received 39 credits, and already started taking classes in her major.

That means AP is a better than IB, right? No.

Continue reading this post »

'What Works' in Education: Vouchers - WSJ.com

President Obama's fiscal 2011 budget calls for a 9% increase in federal education spending, and he has famously said that the money should go to "what works" in education. So he ought to take another look at Milwaukee, where the nation's oldest and largest publicly funded school voucher program is showing academic gains.

A report released last week by School Choice Wisconsin, an advocacy group, finds that between 2003 and 2008 students in the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program had a significantly higher graduation rate than students in Milwaukee Public Schools.

"Had MPS graduation rates equalled those for MPCP students in the classes of 2003 through 2008, the number of MPS graduates would have been about 18 percent higher," writes John Robert Warren of the University of Minnesota. "That higher rate would have resulted in 3,352 more MPS graduates during the 2003-2008 years."

In 2008 the graduation rate for voucher students was 77% versus 65% for the nonvoucher students, though the latter receives $14,000 per pupil in taxpayer support, or more than double the $6,400 per pupil that voucher students receive in public funding.

The Milwaukee voucher program serves more than 21,000 children in 111 private schools, so nearly 20% more graduates mean a lot fewer kids destined for failure without the credential of a high school diploma. The finding is all the more significant because students who receive

Report: Racial gap grows in charter schools

Report: Racial gap grows in charter schools:

"The racial gap is widening with the increase in charter schools in Arizona and other states due to a lack of regulation and enforcement of existing civil-rights regulations, a group of researchers based at the University of California-Los Angeles said in a new report.

The UCLA Civil Rights Project report, 'Choice Without Equity,' revealed what researchers deemed a troubling pattern of racial stratification in charter schools across the country."

They said they believe state and federal intervention can turn the trend around.

Gary Orfield, the project's co-director, said the Obama administration's recent grant programs, such as Race to the Top, and charter-school grants that encourage the expansion of charters and development of new ones, are a timely opportunity for regulation.

"We don't want Race to the Top to become a race to the past," Orfield said, referring to the new federal grant program meant to raise school achievement.

Based on data collected from 2000 to 2007 by the National Center for Education Statistics, the researchers found patterns that indicate charter schools in Arizona, California and other Western states have become havens for "White flight."

Of the 98,728 students enrolled in Arizona charter schools in 2007, 52 percent were White, 34 percent Latino, 7 percent Black, 4 percent American Indian and 3 percent Asian.

A Federal Effort to Push Junk Food Out of Schools - NYTimes.com

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration will begin a drive this week to expel Pepsi, French fries and Snickers bars from the nation’s schools in hopes of reducing the number of children who get fat during their school years.

In legislation, soon to be introduced, candy and sugary beverages would be banned and many schools would be required to offer more nutritious fare.

To that end, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack will deliver a speech Monday at the National Press Club in which he will insist, according to excerpts provided to The Times, that any vending machines that remain in schools be “filled with nutritious offerings to make the healthy choice the easy choice for our nation’s children.”

The first lady, Michelle Obama, said last month that she would lead an initiative to reduce childhood obesity, and her involvement “shows the importance all of us place on this issue,” Mr. Vilsack said.

The administration’s willingness to put Mrs. Obama’s popularity on the line is a calculated bet that concerns about childhood obesity have become so universal that the once-partisan fight over who should control school food offerings — the federal government or school boards — has subsided.

But Republican support is far from certain.

Senator Saxby Chambliss, a Georgia Republican and the ranking member on the Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry, met at the White House with Mrs. Obama on Tuesday to talk about childhood obesity. And while Mr. Chambliss released a statement saying that “schools play an important role in shaping nutrition habits of young children,” an aide refused to say whether he would support a ban on junk foods.

Other Republicans said they would wait to see legislation before signaling whether they would put aside long-held views that school boards should control food offerings.

Senator Blanche Lincoln, a Democrat from Arkansas and the chairwoman of the committee, said she would introduce the legislation within weeks. “It’s a big priority for me, other members and the administration,” she said.

While Democrats have coalesced around the idea of denying sweets to schoolchildren, many students are not keen. When Asthtyn Bowling, a 16-year-old junior at Orange County High School in Orange, Va., was told of the looming ban, she was shocked.

“That would be terrible!” she said.

Still growing strong, the ABC national program that helps disadvantaged students excel

At first glance, state Sen. Bill Perkins from Harlem, Grammy Award-winning musician Tracy Chapman and Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick may seem like an odd trio.

The truth is, they're tightly linked - connected by a New York-based organization that took its cues from the civil rights movement of the 1960s and gave good students the opportunity to excel.

Perkins, Chapman and Patrick all were students in a national program called A Better Chance (ABC). Founded by the heads of prestigious private and public schools across the nation, the 47-year-old nonprofit group's name clearly spells out its goal to take academically fit, economically challenged students and give them access to exceptional educational opportunities.

These three celebrated participants are some of the more than 12,000 middle and junior high school students who have attended some America's best college preparatory schools through the program. Its alumni have achieved greatness in fields such as business, law, politics and medicine.

"ABC was a result of the civil rights movement. We're not just a product of the ABC; we're a product of the civil rights movement," said Perkins.

Perkins, a confirmed city kid, attended summer orientation at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire in 1964 before starting classes at Manhattan's exclusive Collegiate School.

ABC began in 1963, the tumultuous year in which the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. made his moving "I Have a Dream" speech at the first March on Washington, and the year four young African-American girls were killed in the bombing of a Birmingham, Ala., church.

DOE Threatens To Shut Down Policy-Breaking Charter School - NY1.com

DOE Threatens To Shut Down Policy-Breaking Charter School - NY1.com

Parents say a charter school in East New York, Brooklyn is one of the area's few options for a good education, but the Department of Education may shut it down due to policy violations. NY1's Education reporter Lindsey Christ filed the following report.

All the students at East New York Preparatory Charter School passed the state math test last year and 86 percent passed the reading test. Yet the Department of Education says the school may have to close down. They say administrators at East New York have committed the worst violations of charter school policy they have ever seen. The situation was so bad that every single teacher either quit or was fired between June and September 2009.

But at a hearing this week, parents said they are desperate for good schools and begged for East New York Prep to stay open.

"My child is not finished with school until she finishes college. How many schools do that?" said a parent at the hearing.

The test scores at East New York were high, but DOE officials say the school expelled almost 50 low-performing students before they could take them.

DOE officials says many of the problems can be traced to the school's leader, Sheila Joseph, seen right, and the school's board of trustees. Charter school policy does not permit the DOE to fire the principal or replace the board.

"The DOE is telling the truth, their hands are tied. They do need to close down the school," said Mona Davids of the New York Charter Parents Association.

"The chancellor has been clear that if a charter school or a regular district school is not performing, then he is going to hold them accountable and they're going to close down. And the same goes for East New York Prep," said DOE official Michael Duffy.

State Sen. Diaz lashes into city for protecting rubber room teachers - NYPOST.com

State Sen. Diaz lashes into city for protecting rubber room teachers - NYPOST.com:

"A state lawmaker lashed into the city yesterday for protecting the jobs of incompetent and sometimes dangerous teachers by sentencing them to do-nothing jobs in Department of Education 'rubber rooms.'

'New York City must no longer permit a gift of several million dollars for incompetent former teachers who sit in the infamous 'rubber rooms,' drawing full salary while the Department of Education drags its feet and refuses to promptly address allegations of teacher misconduct and incompetence,' state Sen. Ruben Diaz (D-Bronx) fumed.

'What uniform service gets the benefit of 'suspended with pay' without any work responsibilities?"

Will Americans Really Learn Chinese? - Room for Debate Blog - NYTimes.com

The Times recently reported on the rise of Chinese-language instruction in American schools, a push supported by aid from the Chinese government. While language fads come and go — there was Russian during the cold war, then Japanese in the 1980’s, then Arabic after 9/11 — thousands of public schools have stopped teaching foreign languages in the last decade. Is the boom in Chinese language education going to last?

There’s a long tradition of bemoaning Americans’ inadequacy in foreign languages. But what specifically should the nation do to improve its citizens’ knowledge of other languages? What are the impediments?

Susan Jacoby, author of “The Age of American Unreason”
Ingrid Pufahl, Center for Applied Linguistics
Marcelo and Carola Suárez-Orozco, N.Y.U.’s immigration studies program
Norman Matloff, University of California, Davis
Hongyin Tao, professor of Chinese language and linguistics
Bruce Fuller, U.C. Berkeley professor of education and public policy

Students dread transition out of Beverly Hills Unified - latimes.com

Students dread transition out of Beverly Hills Unified - latimes.com:

"The few dozen nonresident eighth-graders who won't be going to Beverly High as planned say they're left in limbo, not sure where to enroll or how they'll adjust to new academic and social standards."

Taylor Short said the last few weeks have been like walking through a fog, unable to see what's ahead. The Beverly Vista Elementary eighth-grader has no idea where she'll enroll next year. She wonders whether she'll stay in touch with her best friends and feels let down by adults.

David Yona, a top athlete at El Rodeo Elementary, said he had been looking forward to the summer, when sports teams condition and train. Sadness sets in when he thinks about the fun he will probably miss before he starts his freshman year in the fall.

Although Taylor and David live outside the Beverly Hills Unified School District, they have attended its schools for years on special permits. The district's Board of Education voted last month not to renew permits for the eighth-graders and other elementary students. They allowed high school students to continue through graduation.

The district is changing the way it funds schools, declining state money based on student attendance and instead using property-tax revenue. Board members argued that Beverly Hills taxpayers should not subsidize education for nonresidents.

The district will, however, continue other nonresident permits, including those for children whose parents attended Beverly Hills schools and whose grandparents still live in the city.

Parents can appeal to the Los Angeles County Office of Education, which has said it will review each case individually. Some have said they may sue the district.

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