Tuesday, June 15, 2010

Handicapping New York’s RTTT app: Good and medium news | GothamSchools

Handicapping New York’s RTTT app: Good and medium news

by Maura Walz

How does New York’s Race to the Top application compare to other states? An analysis of school district and union buy-in to state applications published yesterday by EdWeek gives some clues.
On a piece of the application that is worth 60 out of the total 500 points, New York outperformed the national average - but not staggeringly so.
One of the ways a state can win Race to the Top is by proving that its school districts and teachers union support the reforms the application proposes. States prove this by turning in Memorandums of Understanding signed by each of those groups. The more MOUs a state submits, the more points it gets toward the 60-point categories for buy-in. (You can read the full scoring guidelines for the competition here.)
In New York, all of the state’s 744 school district superintendents agreed to participate in New York’s plan if the state wins grant money. That’s a lot more than the average of 61 percent of school districts that signed onto their

HISD's high school chief is on leave | School Zone | Chron.com - Houston Chronicle

HISD's high school chief is on leave

David Simmons

David Simmons, Houston ISD's new chief officer over high schools, is on leave, district spokesman Norm Uhl confirms. Uhl had no other details.

HISD Superintendent Terry Grier hired Simmons, who had abruptly resigned from his job as superintendent of Richardson ISD, in February. If you'll remember, Grier's first pick for his chief of middle schools, Terence Johnson, who worked for KIPP,bowed out and decided to stay at the charter school chain, shortly after his name was released.

We'll let you know if we get more details.

UPDATE: Grier says Simmons is on medical leave.

Posted by Ericka Mellon at June 15, 2010 03:25 PM

HechingerEd Blog | Earn an online degree at iCollege

Earn an online degree at iCollege

My Old School (Photo by Dave Bleasdale)

Minnesota’s two-term governor Tim Pawlenty challenged the status quo of higher education when he appeared on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart Thursday night. He talked about the role of government and how we educate our students at the post-secondary level, but the overall message was about efficiency.

“Do you really think in 20 years somebody is going to put on their backpack … haul their keisteracross campus, and sit and listen to some boring person drone on about econ 101…?” asked Gov. Pawlenty. The segment in which he discussed education can be seen here.

If it seemed unusual for a governor to be on a national television program touting alternative methods of higher education, his timing was perfect. Across the United States, public universities are raising tuitions due to budget cuts, making it harder to afford traditional higher education. Community colleges have become selective because they are oversubscribed.

Enter the innovators.

Burck Smith, an internet entrepreneur and founder of StraighterLine, an online venue for college courses, is “bent on altering the DNA of higher education as we have known it for the better part of

Continuing the Search for Better Quality Indicators � The Quick and the Ed

Continuing the Search for Better Quality Indicators

by Bill Tucker

Since students will increasingly blend their learning experiences — taking virtual courses but also continuing to attend place-based institutions in some form, there’s a pressing need to develop a better set of course-level quality indicators.
Rob responds to my suggestion of four outcome-focused quality measures by warning about thepotential for providers to cream: soak up public funding but offer little real learning or value-add. In particular, he re-counts the story of how he self-taught himself to test out of his high school civics class. Agreed,

Too Much Institutional Autonomy is Bad

by Kevin Carey

Last month, for-profit Kaplan University and the California Community College Chancellor’s Office announced a mutual course articulation / transfer arrangement whereby CCC students who transferred to Kaplan would be able to bring their credits with them and get a 10 percent price discount on Kaplan courses, while students who stayed enrolled at a CCC while taking Kaplan courses would get a 42 percent price discount and be able to count those Kaplan credits toward their CCC degree. The arrangement was spurred by the fact that incompetent politicians and feckless voters in California have run their state into utter financial ruin and are thus unable / unwilling to provide space in public colleges and universities to tens of thousands of students despite the fact that economic down times are precisely when such access is needed the most.
Jane Patton, President of the Academic Senate for California Community Colleges, objected to the deal, saying “I’m hard pressed to see where we could … make this favorable to faculty.” Fellow Brainstormer Sara Goldrick-

Reed Vs. California - Perdaily.com

Reed Vs. California

by Leonard

Even in H.G. Wells classic science fiction story The Time Machine, the passive Eloi ultimately get the guts to fight back from being bred as the food supply for their more assertive underground dwelling Morlock masters. While LAUSD hasn't started eating teachers yet, I don't put anything past LAUSD's carnivorous leadership that like the Morlock will do anything to survive in a Los Angeles that is more devastated year after year. But let's face it folks, the less than intellectual wizards that continue to run the District and public education into the ground in Los Angeles couldn't do so if they were not kept in power and supported by the puppet masters in Sacramento and Washington who take their marching orders from corporate interests that President-elect Karen Lewis of the Chicago Teachers' Union sees only concerned with the potential $380 billion privatization of public education.

Just take a look at the recent case of Reed vs. California which recently came down from the California Supreme Court and hopefully you will realize just how coordinated the attack is against professional teachers and the hard

Sacramento teachers voting on pay cut, concessions | News10.net | Sacramento, California | News

Sacramento teachers voting on pay cut, concessions

Sharon Ito

Last updated 2 hrs ago

SACRAMENTO, CA -- The Sacramento City Teachers Association could be the latest teachers union to take a pay cut to help out its financially-troubled school district.

SCTA members are voting this week on a contract agreement reached between the district and union leadership that calls for significant concessions. Results are expected to be announced on Friday.

District spokesman Gabe Ross said the pay reduction is "equivalent to three furlough days," however, the number of instructional days for students has not been reduced.

The pay cut is expected to save the district up to $2.4 million, according to Ross. However, the district entered negotiations facing a $32.5 million budget deficit.

Under the agreement, teachers will have to work 15 years, up from 10 years, in order to become vested, and employees will be contributing more to their health insurance benefits.

The district and the union have also agreed to explore a parcel tax measure in order to maintain class size reduction.

If the teachers approve the deal, it will head to the school board for approval.

Teachers in the Elk Grove Unified School District

Evaluating Expanded Learning Time � The Quick and the Ed

Evaluating Expanded Learning Time

by Elena Silva

We know, we know…American kids are falling behind each other and other nations because we’re stuck with an outdated “agrarian” school calendar. President Obama and Secretary Duncan have both made public statements about the need to modernize school schedules, and over the past several years states and districts have been steadily moving toward a new phase of school time experiments (the 1990s saw a similar spate of time reform after 1982’s A Nation at Risk called for extending school from the average 180 to 200 days and then the National Education Commission on Time and Learning put out recommendations in the early 90s for time reform). Year-round or “modified” calendars are now back in the news, and extended school days and years, including a wide range of alternative start and stop times, have been proposed and implemented by schools and districts around the country.
Massachusetts’ Expanded Learning Time initiative, established in 2005, has been the best signal that today’s time reform efforts might have some staying power. The state supported initiative has been growing annually, more than doubling school and district participation. Its creator, the nonprofit advocacy group Mass2020, just-released its 2010 progress report touting the ELT initiative’s successes. The ELT model, says the report,

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.

Taking summer school courses while sitting by the pool? Virtual learning comes to Chicago schools. (Chicago Sun-Times)
Why do graduates wear those ridiculous-looking robes? (Slate)
Is the U.S. headed for a gross mismatch between educational training and labor market demand? (Inside Higher Ed)
What’s the latest development in federal edujobs money? (Politics K-12)

Text of proposed SCUSD CTA contract � SCUSD Observer

Text of proposed contract � SCUSD Observer

SCUSD Observer

Text of proposed contract

Survey says: Poverty, parental involvement key Education news - Boston Globe - MCAS results - latest education news - Boston.com

Education news - Boston Globe - MCAS results - latest education news - Boston.com

Survey says: Poverty, parental involvement key

June 15, 2010

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ESSEX, Vt.—Vermont teachers say poverty at home and parental involvement in schools are among the factors that affect student performance.

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A survey of 6,200 teachers and support professionals released Tuesday found that educators believe poverty at home continues to play a big role in classroom achievement, and that poorer districts have less favorable learning conditions in their schools.

Most teachers surveyed said they are happy in their jobs and believe their schools are good places to work and learn.

Martha Allen, president of the Vermont NEA, which commissioned the survey, says the 12,000-member teachers union will work with the state to take the survey's findings to heart in adapting to President Obama's education strategy.

A charter school incubator grows mom-and-pop schools | GothamSchools

A charter school incubator grows mom-and-pop schools

by Anna Phillips

Seated before an audience of people hoping to become charter school founders, Dirk Tillotson delivered a piece of advice: “You’ve got to be crazy to do this.”
It was early spring, and Tillotson, who founded a program to help mom-and-pop charter schools open, was offering this line as both a warning and a challenge. His audience didn’t hail from the KIPPs or Harlem Success Academies of the charter world and they didn’t have millionaires in their corners, which is why they’d come to him.
Charter schools were created as a way to test out new educational ideas, but the barriers to opening an experimental school are formidable. Some schools open as franchises of charter school networks, which often help principals through the application process by providing support and greasing political wheels as needed.

David Cantor, Department of Education press secretary, resigns

by Anna Phillips

David Cantor, head of the Department of Education's press juggernaut, is leaving. (Courtesy of Cantor.)

After five years of taking our phone calls and returning most of them, Department of Education Press Secretary David Cantor is moving on.
He had the job longer than any of his predecessors, overseeing both periods of high-frequency press outreach and long droughts of stay-the-course defense.
His departure will make it even harder for reporters to extract information out of an opaque organization,

UCD med school boosts minority enrollment - Medical News - sacbee.com

Two burglary suspects arrested at elementary school

By Bill Lindelof - Published: 11:27 am

Two burglary suspects Tuesday morning were taken into custody on a Sacramento elementary school campus.

Sacramento-area schools compete for 'Big Lots' money

By Melody Gutierrez - Published: 9:14 am

Four area schools are vying for a $10,000 grand prize in an online video contest sponsored by Big Lots.

Sacramento City schools, teachers union reach deal

By Melody Gutierrez - Updated: 11:45 am

A stalemate between the Sacramento City Unified School District and its teachers union ended Monday after officials signed an agreement with considerable concessions by theSacramento City Teachers Association.

UCD med school boosts minority enrollment

By Bobby Caina Calvan - Published: 12:00 am

At the start of this decade, the UC Davis Medical School was among the country's top producers of primary care physicians, ranking 24th among the country's 141 medical schools.

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