Friday, April 9, 2010

Non-Effects of Milwaukee Vouchers: What's It Mean? :: Frederick M. Hess

Non-Effects of Milwaukee Vouchers: What's It Mean?

by Frederick M. Hess • Apr 9, 2010 at 8:50 am
Cross-posted from Education Week

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The University of Arkansas School of Education, home to my good friends Patrick Wolf and Jay Greene, yesterday released new research showing that students in Milwaukee's two-decade old voucher program (the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program) "scored at similar levels as their peers not participating in the school choice program."

Wolf, who has led this effort as well as the federally-endorsed evaluation of the DC voucher program, summarized, "Voucher students are showing average rates of achievement gain similar to their public school peers." Translation: when it comes to test scores, students with vouchers are performing no differently than other kids. (It is worth noting that MPCP students are being educated more cheaply than are district school students).

What to make of the results? First off, 20 years in, it's hard to argue that the nation's biggest and most established voucher experiment has "worked" if the measure is whether vouchers lead to higher reading and

AB 656 - Fair Share for Fair Tuition | Alberto Torrico for Attorney General

AB 656 - Fair Share for Fair Tuition

AB 656 will help reverse the skyrocketing fees and tuition at our UC, CSU and community college campuses. While California is struggling with record deficits and education funding is being gutted, big oil is enjoying historic profits. But California is the only major oil producing state in the country that doesn't charge big oil their fair share. Alaska imposes a 25% oil severance fee and Texas raises up to $400 million annually through a similar fee.

It's time to make the oil and gas industry pay their fair share to help save our colleges and universities.

Please join me right now in support of AB 656 to fund higher education in California.

Sac City's contract move surprises teachers union - Sacramento News - Local and Breaking Sacramento News | Sacramento Bee

Sac City's contract move surprises teachers union

Published: Friday, Apr. 9, 2010 - 12:00 am | Page 2B

Sacramento City Teachers Association officials said they were caught off guard Thursday by the Sacramento City Unified School District's decision to make its concessions proposal public.

The district presented a list of concessions – including three furlough days – for the teachers union at Thursday's board meeting, which trustees approved unanimously. Making the proposal public – or "sunshining" it – is the first

The Educated Guess Bill Lucia new CEO of EdVoice

The Educated Guess

Bill Lucia new CEO of EdVoice

Posted in Advocacy organizations

Bill Lucia is the new CEO of EdVoice, the small but influential voice for charters, public school choice, and school equity and reform in Sacramento.
The former COO of EdVoice was the obvious choice; Lucia worked closely with former CEO Rae Belisle until she resigned for health reasons last month.
Lucia has been a behind-the-scenes figure at the state Capitol for years. Past jobs include executive director of the State Board of Education, chief consultant of the Assembly Education Committee, senior staff on the Budget and Appropriations Committees, and chief of staff and education consultant to the chairman of the Senate Republican Caucus. He was also senior analyst at both the Legislative Analyst’s Office and the Department of Finance.

Let districts decide on Race to the Top

Posted in Race to the Top

It’s not surprising that Supt. of Public Instruction Jack O’Connell and Gov. Schwarzenegger’s secretary of education, Bonnie Reiss, are ambivalent about reapplying to Race to the Top. You can sense the dread in between their words.
California ranked 27th out of 40 states in the first round; having gone through one knock-down over reforms, the Legislature is in no mood to go through another. Districts that didn’t sign up the first time won’t change their minds. The California Teachers Association isn’t about to encourage them. And it will take a huge amount work to make the state’s application competitive – if that’s even possible, given glaring faults that judges pointed out.
But before pulling out, state officials should at least consider a very different direction: building up by scaling back.
(Read more and comment on this post)

This Week In Education Obama: What Does Barack Really Think About Education?

This Week In Education

Obama: What Does Barack Really Think About Education?

by Alexander Russo

David Remnick's got a new book about Barack Obama out, called The Bridge, which focuses in large part on Obama's life and career in Chicago. According to Remnick, it's not a pretty sight. Obama is measured, political, and profoundly ambitious. Not that there's anything wrong with that. No word yet whether the book delves into Obama's fascinating,

Just Updated “The Best…” List For Speaking English | Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day...

Just Updated “The Best…” List For Speaking English

Filed under talking

I’ve just substantially updated and revised The Best Sites To Practice Speaking English.

I was surprised to see how many of the original sites on the list have gone out of business. But there are still plenty of options available.

Best Reading Sites

by Larry Ferlazzo

Here is today’s review of a few “The Best…” lists, this time on The Best Reading Sites. Again, I hope you find them helpful. Because of some technical issues that I’m too lazy to fix, these particular links might not work well if you’re subscribing to this blog via email, or viewing it on Facebook. RSS Readers feeds should be fine. If you go directly to my blog, though, they’ll all work fine.
They include:

The Best Websites To Help Beginning Readers

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

Schmoke was key to D.C. teachers contract deal

Former Baltimore mayor brought feuding sides back together

MORE ON EDUCATION

Former Baltimore mayor Kurt Schmoke (TWP)

Allergies can affect kids' grades

School nurses are sending home notes to parents that they are seeing more children with symptoms of allergies. For many students, they are more than just an irritant. Allergies can affect how well they do at school.

Researchers in the United Kingdom did a study published in 2007that showed that seasonal allergic rhinitis--a common allergy--affected performance on national exams of 1,834 students aged 15 to 17.

Continue reading this post »

Principal keeps student in AP class she rejected

Sherry Arritt's daughter told her counselors, English teachers and the principal at Barren County High School in Kentucky that she did not want to take Advanced Placement English Literature. She was a 4.0 student. She wanted to study nursing in college. She already had AP French on her schedule. AP English was too much. She wanted the less demanding honors English course.

When the school refused to change her schedule, her parents repeated that seemingly reasonable decision to her principal, Keith Hale, and the district superintendent, Jerry Ralston. Both men refused to let her drop AP. They had decided that too many students were taking courses that were too easy for them, missing a chance to challenge themselves and prepare for college.

"I really believe if we had continued to let families decide" to put children in courses beneathe their abilities "we would still have the 30-plus ACT [the equivalent of 2000-plus on the SAT] student sitting in Basic English," Hale said.

The Arritt parents were so upset by this that they transferred their daughter to another school for her senior year. What happened to them dramatizes an issue of growing importance when many educators are doing everything they can to prepare students for higher education, even if some of the students and their families think they go too far.

Continue reading this post »

Gray warns of strings on private ed dollars

D.C. Council Chairman and mayoral candidate Vincent C.Gray said Thursday he welcomes the DCPS-WTU tentative agreement, but that the council will take a hard look at the $64.5 million in foundation largesse embedded in the pact.

"While I appreciate and am grateful for outside resources and new partnerships that help our children achieve and reward high-quality teachers, there is no such thing as a free lunch," Gray said in a statement. "Grants or donations of this magnitude rarely come without expectations or some kind of give and take. We will need to determine what those expectations are, what DCPS might be expected to give as it takes funds to the tune of $64.5 million, what strings are attached, and whether D.C. taxpayer dollars may be at-risk at any point."

Chief Financial Officer Natwar M.Gandhi's fiscal review of the private donations is due by the middle of next week. If Gandhi gives the green light, the teachers' union will send out mail ballots for a two-week voting period. If the union approves, the accord goes to the council for final consideration.

Here is Gray's full statement:

Continue reading this post »

Rhee funds contract with Houston connection

A Houston foundation created by a billionaire hedge fund manager who began his career as a trader for Enron would finance part of theproposed contract between DCPS and the Washington Teachers' Union. The Laura and John Arnold Foundation would provide $10 million of the $64.5 million Rhee has assembled to pay for teacher raises and performance bonuses under the tentative agreement announced this week.

While a couple of the names in the private funding mix, Eli and Edythe Broad and the Walton Family Foundation, are highly recognizable brands in the world of educational philanthropy, the Arnolds are relatively new players. Their IRS Form 990 for 2008 lists a $5 million donation to Baylor College of Medicine and another $5 million to Texas Children's Hospital. Published reports say they provided $10 million for a major expansion of the KIPP and YES public charter schools in Houston.

Their money for the teachers' contract would be limited to underwriting the merit pay program that Rhee plans to initiate this fall, according to Cate Swinburn, president and executive director of the D.C. Public Education Fund, the non-profit that will manage the private grants for DCPS. The same restriction applies to the $10 million pledged by Broad. The $44.5 million from the Walton and Robertson foundations could be used for both bonuses and the 20 percent salary increase that is also built into the contract.

Ed Buzz: The Nation

Schools tackle teacher-on-teacher bullying (USA Today)
English-language learners making gains (Education Week)
Researchers argue over Head Start study (Education Week)
States skeptical about Race to Top contest (New York Times)
School law clinics face backlash (New York Times)
L.A. allows students to stay in other districts (Los Angeles Times)

Ed Buzz: The Region

Loudoun looking to slash positions, up fees (WTOP)
Kids at Md. school get tainted milk (Fox 5)
McDonnell signs college lab school legislation (Richmond Times Dispatch)
Schools reduce police presence (The Examiner)
Montgomery College, schools brace for cuts (The Gazette)
P.G. County PTA reinstated (The Gazette)
Md. GOP: Don't raise dropout age (The Gazette)
Birth-control center finds home at T.C. Williams (Alexandria Gazette Packet)
Fairfax teacher quits over embezzlement charges (Examiner)
MoCo teachers say they are overwhelmed (Gazette)
Alex. considers new school boundaries(Examiner)
PG parents fear impact of school cuts(WJLA)
Md. lawmakers favor ed cuts (Baltimore Sun)

EducationNews.org - EducationNewsToday

EducationNewsToday

Panel hears ideas on next S.D. schools chief

Some parents, teachers and others who have been tapped to help craft a want ad of sorts for the next San Diego schools chief know what they don’t want more than anything else.

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Granite unveils teacher Web rules

Granite teachers soon could be required to give their students a cyber cold shoulder. The Salt Lake Valley school district is considering a new social-networking policy that would forbid employees from fraternizing with...

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Charter-school report puts blame on School District

City Controller Alan Butkovitz said Thursday that the Philadelphia School District had failed to monitor 67 charter schools, leaving both it and the taxpayers "extremely vulnerable to fraud, waste, and abuse." ...

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Butkovitz: Charter schools spending like it's their money

City Controller Alan Butkovitz yesterday blasted the Philadelphia School District's Charter School Office for failing "to monitor charter schools," which spend millions in taxpayers' dollars....

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Florida House passes landmark teacher merit-pay bill

The Florida House passed a landmark teacher merit-pay bill early this morning that aims to put the state at the forefront of a controversial national push to tie teacher compensation to student performance. ...

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Clark County teachers face peer pressure on furloughs

Clark County’s teachers, resisting calls for wage concessions, may now start feeling pressure to buckle from an unlikely source: their colleagues in Washoe County, home of the state’s second-largest teachers association. ...

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Districts Report Grim Outlook as Stimulus Fades

Layoffs, program cuts, and other drastic steps loom as economic-stimulus aid dries up, a survey of school administators finds. ...

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New program to recognize Online Teacher of the Year

The Southern Regional Education Board (SREB) and the International Association for K-12 Online Learning (iNACOL) have teamed up on a new awards program that will recognize an outstanding online teacher for his or her exceptional contributions to virtual... ...

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R.I. Ed. Chief: Failing Schools Need Sweeping Change

Failing schools are a drain on the state's already sluggish economy and require wholesale transformation, state Education Commissioner Deborah Gist told lawmakers. ...

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Ankeny students learn a different kind of writing

Ankeny students learn a different kind of writing First-grade students at Westwood Elementary School in Ankeny have been creating booklets together during a new program called ...

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Deputy uses Taser on students, apparently at their request

A Lake County sheriff's deputy used a Taser on about 30 high school students Thursday morning during a career fair on the playground of Lake County High School in Leadville. ...

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Fighting the corporate sludge

4.9.10 - You might remember ‘Jamal’ from my article on Detroit Public schools, “Corporate Barbarians at the Gate: Wal-Mart internships at Detroit Schools”...

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Jay Mathews: Principal keeps student in AP class she rejected

I can hear some of you mumbling: What is Mathews doing? His nutty campaign for AP and International Baccalaureate and his love of anything to which the word rigor can be attached is the reason why educators push this stuff too hard. Is he finally confessing his sins of overdoing challenging courses? ...

Full story

Latest News and Comment from Education

Friday, April 9, 2010

Non-Effects of Milwaukee Vouchers: What's It Mean?

AB 656 - Fair Share for Fair Tuition

Sac City's contract move surprises teachers union

Just Updated “The Best…” List For Speaking English

Schmoke was key to D.C. teachers contract deal

MORE ON EDUCATION

Allergies can affect kids' grades

Principal keeps student in AP class she rejected

Gray warns of strings on private ed dollars

Rhee funds contract with Houston connection

Ed Buzz: The Nation

Ed Buzz: The Region

EducationNewsToday