Monday, March 8, 2010

Persisently Low-Achieving Schools - Year 2010 (CA Dept of Education)

State Schools Chief O'Connell, Education Secretary Reiss, and State Board of Education President Mitchell Release Preliminary List of Schools Identified as 5 Percent of Persistently Lowest Achieving and Call for Action to Improve Schools

SACRAMENTO — Working to ensure access to high-quality education for all students, State Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O'Connell, Secretary of Education Bonnie Reiss, and State Board of Education President Theodore R. Mitchell today released a preliminary list of 188 California public schools identified as persistently lowest achieving.

The list is subject to approval by the State Board of Education which is expected to take up this issue, (agenda item #18) on Thursday at Agenda--March 10-11, 2010 - State Board of Education.

The schools identified as persistently lowest achieving must engage in a school intervention model as required by state and federal law.

"This is an opportunity to make dramatic changes at chronically underperforming schools," O'Connell said. "The intervention choices provide an opportunity to make systemic changes that improve teaching and learning. As a result, we will help prepare thousands of students for a brighter future."

"The parents and students of these underperforming schools deserve all our support in providing intervention choices to help transform these schools to better serve them and their communities," said Secretary Reiss. "It is time for bold action to help these students and schools."

"Identifying the state's persistently lowest-achieving schools is a significant step forward in ultimately transforming these schools and meeting the needs of our students," said State Board President Mitchell.

State and federal laws associated with the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) and the School Improvement Grant (SIG) program require California to identify the state's low-achieving schools and to require the persistently lowest-achieving 5 percent of those schools to implement one of four school intervention models. The identification of the 5 percent of persistently lowest-achieving schools in California is a multi-step process that is informed by both federal and state law (SBx 51) by Senator Darrell Steinberg, (D-Sacramento).

Schools identified as the lowest 5 percent of the state's persistently lowest-achieving schools are required to implement one of the following four school intervention models:

Turnaround Model: The local educational agency (LEA) undertakes a series of major school improvement actions, including but not limited to, replacing the principal and rehiring no more than 50 percent of the school's staff; adopting a new governance structure; and implementing an instructional program that is research-based and vertically aligned from one grade to the next, as well as aligned with California's adopted content standards.
Restart Model: The LEA converts a school or closes and reopens a school under a charter school operator, a charter management organization (CMO), or an education management organization (EMO) that has been selected through a locally determined rigorous review process using state educational agency provided guidance. (A CMO is a non-profit organization that operates or manages charter schools by centralizing or sharing certain functions and resources among schools. An EMO is a for-profit or non-profit organization that provides "whole-school operation" services to a LEA.) A restart model school must enroll, within the grades it serves, any former student who wishes to attend the school.
School Closure Model: The LEA closes a school and enrolls the students who attended that school in other schools in the LEA that are higher achieving. These other schools should be within reasonable proximity to the closed school and may include, but are not limited to, charter schools or new schools for which achievement data are not yet available.
Transformation Model: The LEA implements a series of required school improvement strategies, including replacing the principal who led the school prior to implementation of the transformation model, and increasing instructional time.

LEAs and school districts are responsible for ensuring that one of the four school intervention models is implemented at each school identified as persistently lowest achieving. To fund these turnaround activities, LEAs may use funds provided through ARRA and SIG funds per the SIG program guidelines.

To view the list of schools identified as persistently lowest achieving, and for more information about the identification process, please visit Persistently Lowest-Achieving Schools - Accountability.

Singapore Math - Or How I Learned To Love Numbers - THE DAILY RIFF - Be Smarter. About Education.

Like most Americans, I definitely grew up not seeing any beauty in numbers. My math education was a jumble of meaningless steps, arcane algorithms and tear-stained time tests. It was not until adulthood that I saw the usefulness of numbers, and not until I began teaching Singapore math that I saw their elegance.

Teachers tend to teach using the same methods that were in existence when they were children themselves. Called "social transmission of acquired behavior", scientists have shown this to be common among most species. In humans, it probably explains the monolithic inertia so evident in public education.

So when I started teaching math, I used worksheets, time tests, and rote memorization - all the same tools that had not worked when I was a child! What else did I know?

On March 27, 2004, (yes, I remember the date!) I met Corrinne Lieu, an experienced teacher from Singapore who had come to California after her marriage, and all that was soon to change.

Singapore math is, of course, the national curriculum of Singapore, and over the last ten years, it has been spreading gradually through progressive schools and districts across the US. (Editor's Note: Singapore historically ranks #1 or #2 in Math internationally, well ahead of the U.S. See related story here.)

LA students reunite for ailing mentor Escalante

by Esmeralda Bermudez - Mar. 8, 2010 11:51 AM
Los Angeles Times

There was a time in East Los Angeles when el maestro's gruff voice bounced off his classroom walls. He roamed the aisles, he juggled oranges, he dressed in costumes, he punched the air; he called you names, he called your mom, he kicked you out, he lured you in; he danced, he boxed, he screamed, he whispered. He would do anything to get your attention.

"Ganas," he would say. "That's all you need. The desire to learn."

Nearly three decades later, Jaime Escalante finds himself far from Garfield High School, the place that made him internationally famous for turning a generation of low-income students into calculus whizzes. Twenty-two years have passed since his classroom exploits were captured in the film "Stand and Deliver."

He is 79 and hunched over in a wheelchair at a cancer treatment center in Reno, Nev. It is cold outside, and the snow-capped mountains that crown the city where his son brought him three weeks ago on a bed in the back of his old van remind him of his native Bolivia.

He can't walk. He struggles to eat. Stomach acids have burned his vocal cords, reducing his voice to a whisper. The doctors who diagnosed him with bladder cancer told him recently he has weeks-at best, a few months-to live.

But don't let the frail man fool you. The teacher is not done teaching. Behind his large square glasses, that intense, mischievous look that once persuaded students to believe in themselves still lives in his eyes. He smiles at nurses, flashes a thumbs up.

When asked about his former students-the engineers, lawyers, surgeons, administrators and teachers now spread across the country-he wastes no time. He steals a nearby pen and slowly, in capital letters that have now grown faint, begins to write in Spanish:

THEY UNDERSTOOD THE SIGNIFICANCE OF GANAS, THE GIANT STEP TO SUCCESS. I HAD MANY OPPORTUNITIES IN THIS COUNTRY, BUT THE BEST I FOUND IN EAST L.A. I AM PROUDEST OF MY BRILLIANT STUDENTS.

When news of Escalante's condition broke last week, his former students rallied. Many

Persistently Lowest-Achieving Schools - Accountability (CA Dept of Education)

Persistently Lowest-Achieving Schools

Federal and state laws and guidance require states to identify persistently lowest achieving schools. The lowest 5 percent of these schools must implement a school intervention model in 2010-11.

Program Information

Frequently Asked Questions (Outside Source)
Prepared by the US Dept of Education in response to the School Improvement Grant.
School Improvement Grant (SIG) (Coming Soon)
Race to the Top (RTTT) (Outside Source)
State Fiscal Stabilization Fund (SFSF)

Identification Criteria

Definition of Tiers I, II, and III

Preliminary Identification of Criteria

Detailed Methodology (Coming Soon)

Persistently Lowest-Achieving Schools

Tier I Schools (New 8-Mar-2010)
Tier II Schools (New 8-Mar-2010)
Graduation Rate Only Schools (New 8-Mar-2010)

Varying Rates of Improvement in Low-Performing Schools Education Research Report

Education Research Report

Varying Rates of Improvement in Low-Performing Schools

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Data from two states demonstrate differing trends in school performance and improvement,
Provide insights into ESEA reauthorization and strategies for identifying our nation’s “stuck” schools

A report by The Education Trust shows that schools often lumped together as “low performing” are not all alike. Examining data from reading and mathematics assessments for elementary and middle schools in ten states, the study’s authors found that some low-performing schools remain stuck year after year, and others that started low performing are among the fastest improvers in their states.

Amid conflicting claims about whether we have the know-how and will to reverse the course of troubled schools and at a time when the federal government is vastly increasing its investment in struggling schools, “Stuck Schools: A Framework for Identifying Schools Where Students Need Change—Now!” sheds much-needed light on what’s actually happening—and what is not—in our lowest performing schools.

“State and local educators and policymakers can apply an analysis like ours right now to better target their interventions. And given the tough budget situation in most states, strategic targeting is more important than ever,” said Daria Hall, director of K-12 policy at The Education Trust and coauthor of the report. “But we also hope this paper will help illuminate the conversation about reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. This analysis points to a need to look not just at a school’s performance but at its rate of improvement as well.”

The report—the first in a four-part “Stuck Schools Series” that examines school achievement and improvement patterns—explores the data on improvement in initially low-performing schools in two states, Maryland and Indiana. These states were selected as examples because they illustrate quite different improvement patterns that are evident in the eight other states the authors examined. Some of the findings:

• Based on reading-proficiency rates, 267 elementary and middle schools in Maryland started out in the bottom quartile of performance. Tracking these initially low-performing schools over five years, the study found that 64 percent made gains that put them among the top-improving schools in the state, 29 percent made average improvement, and only 7 percent had gains (or declines) that put them among the slowest “improvers” in the state.
• Of the 370 elementary and middle schools in Indiana that started o

New York City’s Changing High School Landscape

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Complete report

New York City’s public high school system — the nation’s largest — underwent a sweeping transformation during the first decade of the twenty-first century. At the start of the decade, students were routinely assigned to their zoned high schools, which often had thousands of students and were overcrowded and low-performing. By the 2007-2008 school year, some 23 large and midsize schools with graduation rates below 45 percent were closed or on their way to closing. Simultaneously, many new schools that were intended to serve high school-age students came into being, including almost 200 new small schools.

In a break with past practices, the majority of the new small schools accepted students at all levels of academic proficiency and thus were open to those who would likely have attended the closed schools. While the new small schools have various themes and educational philosophies, they share three objectives: to prepare their students for college; to ensure strong student-teacher relationships; and to combine learning with real-world examples both inside and outside the classroom.

Concurrent with these changes in the supply of high schools, the City created a new system by which students exercised demand for them: school choice was extended to all incoming high school students in New York City — compelling rising ninth-graders to indicate up to 12 schools that they wanted to attend. A computerized process was then used to assign each student to his or her highest-ranked school with space available. While the

The Educated Reporter: Living on Doubleshot in New Orleans schools.

The Educated Reporter: Living on Doubleshot in New Orleans schools.
THE EDUCATED REPORTER

MONDAY, MARCH 8, 2010

Living on Doubleshot in New Orleans schools.

Check out this thorough piece by Sarah Carr of the New Orleans Times-Picayune about the toll on teachers at no-excuses charter schools. Let’s say that the time commitment these teachers make must be kept up to be effective at the school, and that within a couple of years they will burn out and leave because of it. Does it matter? Well, that should be broken down into a few questions. Does it matter for student achievement, as long as strong new teachers take their place? Does it matter for school and community culture? And finally, does it matter for the profession?

That last question is the most interesting to me. I think it matters, and not because I think a teaching degree should be a lifelong license to coast. I have several relatives and friends, all mothers, who have been excellent teachers in high-poverty schools for their entire careers. They work at traditional schools on traditional schedules—though, like all good teachers, they give some of their time off as well. Not 60 hours a week, though. Were that the expectation, they would not teach, and students in their schools would be worse

District Dollars: Welcome to District Dollars

District Dollars: Welcome to District Dollars
District Dollars: Balancing the Budget for Davis Schools

Welcome to District Dollars

For a third straight year, the Davis Joint Unified School District (DJUSD) faces budget cuts because of less funding from the California state government. In January Davis school superintendent James Hammond presented the Board of Education with a proposal to close a $5.6 million budget gap for the 2010-11 school year.

District Dollars is a web-based, interactive program to help you understand the DJUSD budget situation.

You will learn about:

How we pay for California schools
How much money the district gets and how it is spent
What are the different options for balancing the budget
The superintendent’s plan to close the budget gap
The timeline for budget decisions

We want to hear from you!

District Dollars lets you ask questions, provide feedback and share your own values about education priorities. Collective results will be reviewed during district budget discussions.

Note: The budget and specific numbers are subject to change.

Davis Joint Unified School District
Dr. J. Quezon Hammond · Superintendent
526 B Street · Davis, CA 95616 · 530-757-5300 · www.djusd.net

District Dollars is a collaborative project of the Davis Joint Unified School District and community volunteers.
Please, tell us how to improve District Dollars.

Eduflack: Investing in Proven Innovation

Investing in Proven Innovation

The hits keep coming from the good folks down on Maryland Avenue. Today, the U.S. Department of Education officially released its Investing in Innovation, or i3, grant RFP. For all of those districts looking to get a piece of nearly $650 million in i3 dollars, the clock starts ... NOW. Full details on the grant process can be found here.

Many will recall that ED circulated a draft i3 RFP for public comment back in the fall. Today's announcement very closely mirrors that which we say months ago. We are still looking at three categories of grants — development, validation, and scale-up. Development grants still come in with a max of $5 million per; validation with a max of $30 million per, and scale up with a max of $50 million per.

School district applicants still need to provide a 20 percent matching contribution from private sources (including those college/university partners). Bonus points remain for early childhood focus, college access and success focus, ELL focus, and rural schools focus (with rural schools worth two extra points and the others worth just one).

Most importantly, the evidence requirements remain the same as they have always been. What does this mean? In this case, innovation not only means the introduction of something new or different; it also means that you have to prove that that new or different approach is proven effective. The feds are seeking very real research to drive this innovation, even in the development grants.

Before the end of the month, our friends with the federal government will hold three information sessions for prospective applicants — in Baltimore, Denver, and Atlanta. Those districts looking to apply for i3 should file a notice of intent within 20 days of the RFP being posted on the Federal Register (still hasn't gone up, as of 11 a.m. today) and applications are due within 60 days of Federal Register posting. ED is now saying they will award i3 grants in two phases.

Today's official grant notice also offers some guidance on how many grants can be awarded. But in the words immortalized by Barbie (the Doll) back in the late 1990s, "math is hard!" For months now, Eduflack has been telling interested LEAs that we are likely only looking at 30 total winners. With a $650 million pool (now down to $643 million), you are looking at eight or nine winners in each of the three categories, assuming districts get close to the max. So $400 million for scale up (eight grants), $200 million for validation (10 grants), and $40-50 million or so for development grants (10 grants). Then the pot has run dry.

But ED seems to have a different view of things. Average grant awards are estimated at $3 million for development, $17.5 million for validation, and $30 million for scale up. (This despite the realization that virtually every state that applied for Race to the Top funds exceeded the budget range that was assigned to their state). Based on those ranges, ED estimates up to five scale up winners, and up to 100 winners each in both development and validation. Obviously, the budget doesn't allow anything close to that.

Five scale up winners at $30 million knocks the total pool down to less than $500 million remaining. A hundred validation grants at $17.5 million per would put us at $1.75 billion, more than three times the remaining pool. And those up to 100 development grants at $3 million per adds another $300 million. So if we top out on the estimates (realizing they are all generous ranges) ED is saying i3 could be up to nearly $2.2 billion. I'm all for stretching the dollar, but that seems to be a little more than the $643 million currently available.

Why is this so important? LEAs need to realize that competition for these grants is going to be significantly difficult and cutthroat. With RttT, we had a sense for how many states would and can win. Virtually every state applies, and based on the funding ranges, we can expect close to 20 states to win. If we don't spend the full RttT pool, then we will have fewer winners.

But with i3, we have the possibility of thousands of school districts and consortia applying for a piece

Pennsylvania NEA and AFL-CIO to Announce Partnership | Intercepts

Pennsylvania NEA and AFL-CIO to Announce Partnership

The press release calls this “an historic agreement”, but it’s hard to tell if this is really nothing more than the Pennsylvania State Education Association saying it won’t stand in the way of its locals joining the AFL-CIO. They are already allowed to apply for membership according to the provisions of the national agreement, which states only:

The AFL-CIO and the NEA will consult with each other through the Implementation Committee concerning each request for membership, and each organization will consult with their affiliated organizations through their own internal processes…. The agreements reached on these and any other issues will be subject to approval by the DANL and the relevant NEA state affiliate, and will be reflected in the Certificate of Affiliation issued by the AFL-CIO to the DANL.

We’ll find out tomorrow morning if there’s any more to it than that.

R.I. Teacher Drama May Be Nearing Conclusion - Teacher Beat - Education Week

It looks like the teachers and administrators in Central Falls, R.I., are back at the bargaining table to work out a plan for transforming the school.

Jay Mathews at the WaPo apologizes for missing the 50 percent teacher-rehiring clause in a recent column. But he's not the only one who made this error; it's been missing in a lot of the national coverage. It took me three posts on the R.I. situation before I brought it up, an omission I made out of the (incorrect) assumption that it was common knowledge that staff-reconstitution policies, including these federal school improvement grants, generally let teachers reapply for their jobs.

The New York Timeswalks through some more reaction, complete with some tough-talk from AFT's Randi Weingarten and NEA's Dennis Van Roekel. The story

California Progress Report

A Missed Day of Action

By Peter Schrag

If last week’s demonstrations protesting funding cuts to California schools and colleges were aimed at getting media attention, they succeeded magnificently. Given the low number of demonstrators, they got a lot more ink than the turnout was worth.

But if they were designed to generate any real political action they got almost nothing. To their credit, the protests were for the most part both civil and directed at the politicians who were responsible for the cuts rather than the university presidents and chancellors charged with inflicting the pain.

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From Anger to Action

By Robert Cruickshank

Last Thursday’s outpouring of protest against the deliberate decision to destroy California's public education system was characterized by one dominant emotion: anger. And that was exactly as it should be. If you're not angry at the collapse of our schools, colleges, and universities, and the stealing of an entire generation's future, then you're really not paying any attention.

I spent the day at Cal State Monterey Bay, hearing student after student take the microphone to express their anger at what has happened to their dreams. This was not a violent anger, but instead the kind of deeply rooted anger that anyone would quite rightly feel when they have been betrayed. The state of California has betrayed these students, having asked them to work hard to succeed in school and promising an affordable quality education, only to yank that promise away from them in order to deliver tax cuts to huge corporations.

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March for California's Future Will Test State's Commitment to Fairness & Equality

By Willie Pelote
AFSCME

A diverse group of Californians acted on the courage of their convictions on Friday, March 5, 2010, by embarking on a 260-mile March for California’s Future in order to highlight the need for quality public services and education in the Golden State.

The marchers hail from both Northern and Southern California and include a Los Angeles probation officer, a San Diego community college professor, a teacher and community organizer from Watsonville, a retired Berkeley adult educator, and two L.A. teachers.

“California has always been seen as a place where anything was possible, if you worked hard enough. Unfortunately, equality of opportunity in the Golden State has diminished,” said probation officer Irene Gonzalez, “and if the budget cuts being contemplated at the state level are allowed to happen, the California dream will vanish for generations of Californians. That’s why I’m marching.”

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AFL-CIO NOW BLOG | International Women’s Day, March 8: Time to Recommit to Equal Rights

International Women’s Day, March 8: Time to Recommit to Equal Rights

by James Parks, Mar 7, 2010

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Women make up more than half the American workforce and are approaching half of union members. On International Women’s Day, March 8, the AFL-CIO is recommitting itself to continue the struggle for equal rights, dignity and respect for all working women.

This past week, the AFL-CIO Executive Council pointed out that much needs to be done for women workers to gain equal footing. For example, the council cites a United Nations report, which shows the majority of the world’s 1.3 billion absolute poor are women. On average, women receive between 30 percent and 40 percent less pay than men earn for the same work. Women also continue to be victims of violence, with rape and domestic violence listed as significant causes of disability and death among women worldwide.

Noting that International Women’s Day began a century ago when women workers in New York City marched for better wages, the council said in a statement:

Just like women 100 years ago, women in America-and around the world-are fighting back. On this year’s anniversary of International Women’s Day, we recommit ourselves to continue to the struggle for equal rights, dignity and respect for all working women while paying close attention to women’s concerns in our fight to create jobs.

Click here to read the council statement.

Here’s some of what’s going on in conjunction with International Women’s Day:

In a survey, women members of the American Federation of Musicians of the United States and Canada (AFM) pointed to times when they felt a lack of respect on the job because of their gender. You can read some of the comments here.
Some of the nation’s entertainment unions will unite on International Women’s Day to give voice to the women of Afghanistan with a presentation of “Out of Silence: Readings from The Afghan Women’s Writing Project,” in Los Angeles. This will be an evening of dramatic readings of selected essays and poems written by emerging Afghan women writers who often face estrangement, beatings, and even death for creatively expressing themselves through the written word. Presenting the readings

March 8, 2010

California public employees on Friday launched a 48-day “March for California’s Future” to highlight the devastating impact of state budget cuts.

Women make up more than half the American workforce and are approaching half of union members. Today, on International Women’s Day, the AFL-CIO is recommitting itself to continue the struggle for equal rights, dignity and respect for all working women.

Follow the AFL-CIO: