Tuesday, June 8, 2010

On Capitol Hill, Addressing the State of the Child - Politics K-12 - Education Week

On Capitol Hill, Addressing the State of the Child

by Alyson Klein

From Guest Blogger Lisa Fine
Lawmakers on Capitol Hill usually talk about children in a specific context, such as education or health policy, but a hearing today—the first of four—focused on "The State of the American Child" in a big-picture way.
The Senate education committee's subcommittee on children and families is receiving testimony from a variety of experts who will examine numerous aspects of children's lives: their health, education, and family and community life.
At today's hearing, Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., who is subcommittee chairman, said he was planning to craft and introduce legislation to create a national commission on children to regularly and closely examine the needs of American families and identify solutions.
"There's a reason our kids get report cards in school," said Dodd, who is retiring after this year. "They help us clearly identify how we're doing. Only by assessing honestly our progress—celebrating our successes and acknowledging our failures—can we improve it."
At the standing-room-only event, Dodd and the subcommittee heard from Alma Powell, chair of America's Promise Alliance, in Washington; Elaine Zimmerman, executive director of Connecticut Commission on Children, in Hamden, Conn.; Jack Lund, president and chief executive officer of the YMCA of Greater New York, in New York City, and Harry Holzer, an economist at Georgetown University.

Race to Top Guru Weiss Moving On Up

by Michele McNeil

Joanne Weiss will become U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan's chief of staff at the end of the month, a department spokesperson confirmed today.
Weiss, the department's Race to the Top director, who has earned high marks for how she's handled this high-profile competition, will replace Margot Rogers, who came to the department alongside Duncan at the beginning of the administration. No word yet on where Rogers, who previously worked for the Gates Foundation, is landing.
The department spokesperson said: "Margot has been an amazing leader, a trusted confidant, and an invaluable

Relatives of missing Oregon boy urge optimism - Boston.com

Relatives of missing Oregon boy urge optimism

In this undated photo provided by the Multnomah County Sheriff's Office, Kyron Horman is seen. The FBI has joined an expanding search for Horman, a 7-year-old Oregon boy who vanished after his stepmother left him at his Portland elementary school on Friday morning. (AP Photo/Multnomah County Sheriff's Office)

By Nigel Duara

Associated Press Writer / June 8, 2010

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PORTLAND, Ore.—Relatives of a 7-year-old Portland boy missing from his elementary school for five days have urged those working to find him to carry on the search with optimism.

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Twenty-two state, local and federal agencies have been following up on more than 1,200 tips in the search for Kyron Horman, who disappeared from Skyline Elementary School on Friday.

"There has been nothing of significance in terms of results to report," Multnomah County sheriff's Capt. Jason Gates said Tuesday at a brief news conference.

He said investigators have interviewed the families of about 90 percent of the school's students, and he asked those who haven't been questioned to call a tip line.

Many parents were at a science fair Friday morning before the boy vanished. Gates said investigators planned to interview everyone who was at the school.

Kelly Ramirez, the sister of Kyron's mother, issued a statement Monday evening thanking everyone who has "worked tirelessly on Kyron's behalf" and asked people to print and distribute fliers with the boy's photo.

"Above all do not give up hope, as we certainly never will," she said. "He is out there and we are going to find him and bring him home safe where he belongs."

Sheriff's deputies and FBI agents posted about 40 yards from the school stopped

Public Education's Forgotten Excellence - Perdaily.com

Public Education's Forgotten Excellence

by Leonard

As I get older, often I find myself mentioning a great movie or actor, a book, or an important event from the past, while getting a quizzical look on the young face that I am trying to share my passionate memories with. While I am old enough to realize that nothing lasts, I also realize that in the relay race that is life, education must function as the bridge between the past and the future where what one generation has valued can be presented to the next generation for their scrutiny, possible approval, and as a point of reference in determining where they want to go.

In the Professor Stanley Fish's New York Times blog today entitled A Classic Education: Back to the Future, Professor Fish reminisces about Classical High School in Providence, Rhode Island where he went over 55 years ago. The academic rigor he describes from that time seems much further removed than its actual 55 years, when juxtaposed with an LAUSD of today which doesn't see this level of academic excellence as even a possible goal in anything but rhetoric. Much like LAUSD of today, Classical High was "A student body made up of the children of immigrants or first generation Americans; many, like [Professor Fish], the first in their families to finish high

Sunshine on College Credit Card Contracts � The Quick and the Ed

QUICK Hits

by Forrest Hinton

Quick Hits is a short compilation of question-raising news stories, blog posts, and video clips that Education Sector team members are reading and viewing each day.
Is it lying in some cases to give students partial credit for partial understanding on state assessments? (Core Knowledge Blog)

Does the education reform movement need more debate and careful scrutiny? (Rick Hess Straight Up)

Is the “energetic, decentralized but forceful reform approach” used by the Obama administration in education worth exporting to other policy issues? (The New York Times)

A better way to borrow? (Inside Higher Ed)

The never-ending debate: National/Common education standards—good or bad? (Cato)

Sunshine on College Credit Card Contracts

by Ben Miller

Though computers and e-mail were widespread by the time I entered college in the fall of 2003, the major throwback to increasingly outdated technology was a landline phone number that my school provided to everyone who lived on campus. Because cell reception in my freshman dorm was pretty spotty, my roommate and I decided it made sense to get a cordless phone to use from time to time.
The phone mostly went unused through the first few months of the semester, but we suddenly started getting a constant barrage of phone calls, starting at the inconvenient for college student hour of 9 a.m. and continuing throughout the day. What was strange was the person on the other end always knew to ask for either my roommate or myself–something I found curious since the numbers are randomly assigned to new people

Election Day in California: Teachers' Unions v. EdVoice - State EdWatch - Education Week

Election Day in California: Teachers' Unions v. EdVoice

By Lesli Maxwell on June 8, 2010 7:38 AM | 1 Comment | No TrackBacks

While the GOP primary for governor gobbles up most of the major media attention today in California, education policy geeks will be more interested in what goes down in the three-person contest for state schools chief. (Yes, there are a total of 12 candidates, but only three that are viable.)

This race, and it actually is a race, is viewed widely as a referendum on the influence of the California Teachers Association, the 325,000-member teachers' union that has, for decades, been one of the state's most formidable special interest groups. The CTA, along with the other statewide teachers' union, the California Federation of Teachers, has sunk close to $1.5 million into the campaign of Tom Torlakson, a former teacher and coach who is an assembly member from the San Francisco Bay Area. Interestingly, the union money has not been used to produce and buy television time for Torlakson. CTA invested in radio spots, which are cheaper than TV.

But the contest's outcome could just as easily be seen as a measure of the influence of wealthy philanthropists with very specific ideas about improving public schooling, folks by the name of Broad (as in Eli), Hastings (as in Reed of NetFlix fame), and Fisher (as in the family of the late Don Fisher, founder of The Gap and major benefactor of KIPP). Those heavy hitters, individually and through their reform organization, EdVoice, have poured about the same amount of dough into the campaign of Gloria Romero, a state senator from Los Angeles. Romero, who is pro-charter school, has also become one of the loudest state voices for the Obama administration's school-reform strategies, particularly its $4 billion Race to the Top sweepstakes. The EdVoice money bought Romerotelevision exposure.

Then there's Larry Aceves, a retired district superintendent who was recruited to run by the Association of California School Administrators. Aceves' candidacy,

Education Law Center asks N.J. Supreme Court to reverse $1B in school spending cuts | - NJ.com

Education Law Center asks N.J. Supreme Court to reverse $1B in school spending cuts

By Jeanette Rundquist/The Star-Ledger

June 08, 2010, 3:25PM

AMANDA BROWN/THE STAR-LEDGERDavid Sciarra, of the Education Law Center, argues against the state's position during arguments about school aid funding in front of the State Supreme Court in Trenton in April 2009.

TRENTON -- A motion being filed in the N.J. Supreme Court today on behalf of school children seeks to force the state to fully fund the school aid formula upheld by the state's highest court last year.

If the action brought by Education Law Center is successful, it could force New Jersey to spend about $1 billion more on schools and impact Gov. Chris Christie's proposed budget, which cut about that much next year.

Christie's proposed a $1.08 billion cut in state formula aid to schools next year. Offset slightly by increases in spending for preschool and teacher pensions, the governor's budget includes an overall reduction of $820 million for schools.

A spokesman for Christie had no immediate comment on the lawsuit.

Since laying out the cuts in March, the governor has stressed that he had no choice but to take from school aid because it is the single largest chunk of the state's budget. No school district lost more than 5 percent of its budget in state aid, although that meant some wealthy suburban districts saw all of their formula aid disappear.

School districts across the state were sent reeling by the cuts, causing local districts to reduce budgets by laying off staff, cutting programs, reducing busing; increasing property taxes, and instituting new charges like student activity fees.

In its brief, the Education Law Center said Christie's cuts "deprive all New Jersey children, particularly vulnerable 'at risk' children, of a thorough and efficient education. The sheer magnitude of the aid cut has devastated all components of districts' educational programs."

The Education Law Center, which is based in Newark and advocates for

Schools Matter: Is there a US science education crisis?

Is there a US science education crisis?

by skrashen

Sent to Science News (June 8) in response to "Confronting a third crisis in US science education," by S. James Gates - http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/58930/title/Comment__Confronting_a_third_crisis_in_U.S._science_education_

Is there a US science education crisis?

"Confronting a third crisis in US science education" (May 22) assumes that there is a real crisis. There are several reasons to doubt this:

- Our science and math test scores are unspectacular, but the problem is not science and math education. Studies show that American students from well-funded schools who come from high-income families outscore all or nearly all other countries on international tests. Only our children in high poverty schools score below the international average. (Payne and Biddle, 1999; Bracey, 2009; Martin, 2009). The US has the highest percentage of children in poverty of all industrialized countries (25%, compared to Denmark's 3%). Our educational system has been successful; the problem is poverty.

Make Schools More Like Business? (Part 2) � InterACT

Make Schools More Like Business? (Part 2)

by David B. Cohen

Recently, I wrote a blog post about applying business thinking to education. This post is Part 2, though not the Part 2 I originally intended to post… so stay tuned for Part 3.
My online wanderings through business reading led me to Dr. W. Edwards Deming, a business and manufacturing expert who worked in the U.S. and Japan, and devised the Deming System of Profound Knowledge. His ideas and reputation are carried forward posthumously through the work of the institute that bears his name. His resumé bore this description: “W. Edwards Deming has been for forty years a consultant, with practice world wide. His clients include railways, telephone companies, carriers of motor freight, manufacturing companies, consumer research, census methods, hospitals, legal firms, government agencies, research organizations in universities and in industry.”
Among other interesting elements of his work, I found “The 14 Points for Management” – and noticed once again that the supposed lessons of business that are offered to education don’t often enough look like the advice I see

Schools Matter: Let's Have Performance Pay for Economists Who Muck Around in Education Issues

Let's Have Performance Pay for Economists Who Muck Around in Education Issues

by Jim Horn

The NYTimes blog, Economix, has a posting by Harvard economist, Edward Glaeser, on a recent conference in Cambridge to air some of the research on teacher pay based on test scores. The conference brought together the customary lineup of pro-corporate and pro-privatization forces, those described by Dr. Paul Peterson as the good against the evil (see Bush v. Holmes (Fl. Sup. Ct.) for some background on Peterson's self-described "small band of Jedi attackers, using their intellectual powers to fight the unified Death Star forces led by Darth Vader, whose intellectual capacity has been corrupted by the urge for complete hegemony”(p. 3).

This illustrious group of Jedi warriors are now ensconced at Harvard within The Program on Policy and Governance (PEPG), whose Advisory Committee is headed by Jeb Bush and whose members include the Who's Who of research chefs and ideologues who earn their bread by manufacturing reports to support the corporate vision of schooling.

Since there was no U. S. research presented at the conference to support the current plan to base tenure and pay on test scores, Glaeser focuses on a rehash of a study done ten years ago in Israel and a more recent one

June 2010 Election Day: Corporations vs. Democracy | California Progress Report

June 2010 Election Day: Corporations vs. Democracy

by kaldveer

By Robert Cruickshank
There is a very clear theme to today's election: will corporations take over California's politics, or will the voters stand up in defense of their democracy?
This theme appears again and again and again in races across the state, from the governor's race on down to the ballot propositions and state legislative races. Corporations and the CEOs that used to run them are convinced that their money will be enough to sway voters to give those corporations and CEOs much more power over our wallets and our elections. A massively underfunded, but broadly-based progressive coalition is fighting back, and in some of the key races, the outcome is far from clear.
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Teacher Reform Tug-of-War: Recruiting Talent vs. Using Talent � The Quick and the Ed

Teacher Reform Tug-of-War: Recruiting Talent vs. Using Talent

by Forrest Hinton

Sometimes anti-establishment education reform thinkers, like other visionaries sharing a loose outlook on the world, get lumped together in a monolithic ball of thought that is easily digestible to those who have a different outlook or no outlook at all. The tragic result of this is that details, diversity of ideas, and shades of perception are lost to external thinkers and policy makers.
Reading Public Impact’s several-month-old 3X for All: Extending the Reach of Education’s Bestyesterday reminded me of the importance of debating alternative models and theories—especially within a group with shared ideals. Like the DuBois-Washington debates on the future of black people in American society or the ongoing debate among libertarian thinkers on the proper role of the Federal Reserve, Emily and Bryan Hassel open up a course-charting discussion for education reformers on how best to use talented people in our worst performing K-12 schools.
Two leading models for improving teacher quality center around the recruitment of smart, persistent achievers

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