Friday, July 30, 2010

Quick Takes: July 30, 2010 - Inside Higher Ed

Layoffs and Investments for Chicago City Colleges

Chicago City Colleges could see a series of reforms -- and also 225 layoffs of non-instructional employees -- under a budget announced Thursday, the Chicago Sun-Times reported. To save money, the two-year college system is eliminating positions, and centralizing many administrative functions at its seven campuses. With those savings and increased tuition revenue (due to enrollment increases), a series of enhancements are planned. More funds will be provided for technology and job training, with an emphasis on matching job training with actual jobs.

ETS Resumes Registrations in Iran for TOEFL and GRE

The Educational Testing Service has announced that it is resuming registrations in Iran for the Test of English as a Foreign Language and the Graduate Record Examination. New United Nations sanctions against Iran led ETS to cut off registrations as the testing service could not process funds coming from the country. Now, ETS has a new arrangement in place to process credit and debit cards in Iran in ways that do not violate U.S. enforcement of the sanctions.

Senate Panel Approves Spending Bill, Pell Shortfall and All

The Senate Appropriations Committee on Thursday voted to pass along the 2011 budget bill that includes Education Department appropriations with no changes to the higher education provisions approved Tuesday by a subcommittee. As it stands, the bill keeps funding unchanged from 2010 levels for most financial aid and access programs, and boosts the National Institutes of Health's budget by $1 billion, to $32 billion. Also unchanged from the subcommittee bill is the absence of funding to make up for the $5.7 billion Pell Grant shortfall. The House of Representatives' appropriations bill included that money, but the Senate committee's Democratic members said that a means for addressing it would have to wait until it goes before the full Senate this fall, or when it is combined with the House measure in conference.

Schools Matter: Test us too!

Test us too!

by skrashen

Educators have complained that the standards and tests for reading and math narrow the focus of instruction to just these subjects. Diane Ravitch told us recently that the feds' reaction to this complaint is simple: Test everything.

The professional organizations seem to think this is a great idea. Twenty-one educational organizations are asking for "standards, assessments, accountability systems, and public reporting of achievement" not just for reading and math but also for science, foreign languages, civics and government, economics, arts, history,

Part 4 of a 3 Part Series

by Kenneth Libby

This is the fourth installment of my 3-part series on charter management organizations (part 1, part 2, part 3). Maybe this should be called a post-script instead - I've only added it because part 3 ended with great disappointment due to the disappearance of comments from Tom Vander Ark's EdReformer blog.

Let me clarify a bit: I contacted EdReformer to find out what happened to the comments. They're claiming the comments were lost when they changed comment programs (from Disqus to something else), and I'm actually inclined to believe this statement. Could they recover the comments? Maybe. I'm going to act as though the removal wasn't done on purpose. It's an entirely different issue if they intentionally removed the comments. I'll do

Tech It From The Top! � InterACT

Tech It From The Top!

by David B. Cohen

This blog post is part of the Leadership Day 2010 campaign, a coordinated blogging effort to promote better learning and education leadership relating to technology integration. The idea comes from Scott McLeod over at Dangerously Irrelevant, a blog that addresses the fast pace of technological change and the slower pace of changes in our thinking.
So, it turns out that our “digital native” students aren’t completely tech savvy after all. Yes, they can send a thousand text messages per day, stream and download media, and keep track of hundreds of friends on Facebook. However, many of us know from classroom practice that students must be taught to use tech tools

Thursday, July 29, 2010

Education Week: Obama Defends Race to Top

Obama Defends Race to Top

By Alyson Klein

President Barack Obama is forcefully defending his signature education initiative, the $4.35 billion Race to the Top program, which has come under fire from civil rights groups that worry the competitive nature of the program creates a system of winners and losers that could hinder schools serving poor and minority students.

In a speech Thursday to the National Urban League in Washington, the president offered a rebuttal to such criticism, saying the steps the program encourages states to take, including lifting caps on charter schools and using student data to inform teacher

Politics K-12 Blog

Commentaries

How Race to the Top Could Inform ESEA Reauthorization

June 29, 2010 The Obama administration's chief education initiative has shown that states are more than willing to pursue school reform if there's something in it for them, policy analyst Chad Aldeman writes.

The Buy-In Myth

April 30, 2010 Despite conventional wisdom to the contrary, states should favor boldness over buy-in in round two of the Race to the Top competition, Dan Weisberg writes.

Did Congress Authorize Race to the Top?

April 27, 2010 Heather Zavadsky shows how Broad Prize-winning districts can teach other urban systems about using new federal funding well.

Obama-Era Education Policy

May 18, 2010Ronald E. Chennault writes that, sadly, the president's actions do not match his rhetoric.

STEM Education: A Race to the Top

January 11, 2010 U.S. Sen. Ted Kaufman, an engineer by training, says it is critical to graduate K-12 students aiming for careers in science, technology, engineering, and math.

Over the Top

December 11, 2009 As states complete their applications for the federal program, Yong Zhao offers a tongue-in-cheek guide to winning strategies.

The Hole in 'Race to the Top'

December 7, 2009 By focusing on the very worst schools, the initiative misses an opportunity to help good urban districts become great, writes Richard Whitmire.

Featured Blog Posts

Race to the Top Assessment: Only Three Consortia Apply
Curriculum Matters, June 24, 2010

Words of Caution on Race to Top Assessment
Curriculum Matters, June 23, 2010

Contractors To Help ED Implement Stimulus Reforms
Politics K-12, June 17, 2010

Education Department Responds to State Waiver Story
On Special Education, June 15, 2010

Was Race to the Top Authorized?
Politics K-12, May 6, 2010

Will Duncan Regret 'High, High Bar' in Race to Top Round 1?
Politics K-12, May 20, 2010

UPDATED: Follow the Stimulus Money

Is the Stimulus Meeting Its K-12 Goals?

Race to the Top: Joanne Weiss & Running the Race

Race to the Top Director, Joanne Weiss, believes that win or lose, what really matters in this competition is how states play the game. This video is part of a Learning Matters series covering the Race to the Top. Watch all related videos and listen to more podcasts here. Produced by: Cat McGrath. Edited by: Edwin Clavijo.

Education and the Financial Crisis

'Kids Count' Finds Improvements, but Numbers Are Pre-Recession

07/27 11:07 pm Child advocates in Tennessee and Georgia say a recent ranking of states based on child well-being may be painting a too-rosy picture, as the ranking is based on data collected ...

Klein to principals: Failing students need “extra attention” in fall | GothamSchools

Klein to principals: Failing students need “extra attention” in fall

by Maura Walz

Thousands of city students who failed their math and reading exams and should have been held back can expect “extra attention” from their schools in the fall, but no formal city-mandated assistance.

That’s the message of a memo Schools Chancellor Joel Klein sent principals this afternoon.

“I expect each of your teacher teams to continue to identify your students’ areas of strength and areas that require extra attention,” Klein wrote. “This is particularly critical for those students who received low scores

Number of teachers rated unsatisfactory rose again last year

by Philissa Cramer

More teachers than ever received unsatisfactory ratings last year, suggesting that the city’s push to rid the school system of more struggling teachers is working.
Principals gave unsatisfactory ratings to 1,813 teachers, 17 percent more than in 2009, according to data the city released today. They also denied tenure to 234 teachers this year, 80 percent more than last year. And

Told they passed, thousands of students failed state exams

by Anna Phillips

Thousands of students are moving up to the next grade this fall even though they failed last year’s state reading and math tests.
Caught between two sets of conflicting test standards — one produced by the city, one by the state — over 10,000 students were wrongly labeled as passing or failing.
Some of them, about 1,807, will get to skip the last week of the summer session, which they had attended unnecessarily. The new state standards show that these students passed their exams.
But the vast majority of them, about 8,500, were initially told they passed and will shortly learn that they actually failed. City education officials have decided to promote these students to the next grade level, though in a typical

State's first Hmong charter school open for parent meetings - Sacramento News | Sacramento Bee #EDU #Education

State's first Hmong charter school open for parent meetings - Sacramento News - Local and Breaking Sacramento News | Sacramento Bee

State's first Hmong charter school open for parent meetings

By Stephen Magagnini
smagagnini@sacbee.com

Published: Thursday, Jul. 29, 2010 - 1:30 pm

California's first Hmong public charter school, Yav Pem Suab Academy - Preparing for the Future Charter School, will hold it's first parent-student-teacher meet and greet from 6 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. tonight at 7555 S. Land Park Drive, Sacramento.

Families will get a chance to learn about their

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