Ohio’s Plunderbund Examines Correlation of School District Ratings with Family Income | janresseger

Ohio’s Plunderbund Examines Correlation of School District Ratings with Family Income | janresseger:

Ohio’s Plunderbund Examines Correlation of School District Ratings with Family Income

Posted on September 30, 2014 by janresseger

For many years Ohio has used a Performance Index to judge its school districts.  The Performance Index is a formula based primarily on standardized test scores.  Not too long ago at a meeting, when someone pointed out that the Performance Index seems to reflect family wealth and may not, in fact, represent school quality, an expert responded that we pretty much have to use the Performance Index as an indicator of school quality in Ohio because it is really the only long standing, reliable indicator we have.  I wondered about this at the time.  A rating system that is wrong and that unfairly assigns blame, however handy, doesn’t seem to me to be a good tool to use.

(Of course there is also the question about why we are creating a competition in the first place—ranking and rating school districts when they serve different children and they are located in different kinds of communities.)

Finally this year people are paying more attention to how Ohio’s school district performance ratings are calculated, because Ohio is in the process of moving from a ranking of “Excellent, Effective, Continuous Improvement, Academic Watch and Academic Emergency” to a more damning system for many school districts—A, B, C, D, and F.  Many of the school districts caught in the “Continuous Improvement” range have been able to benefit from the quaisi-positive frame of that term.  Now some of those supposedly “C” school districts will fall to the D or F category.  And the stakes are high.  Last week this blog (here) quoted a statement from a 2005 National Council of Churches document that clarifies one of the serious consequences in actual practice of evaluating schools and school districts by students’ test scores, a practice codified in 2002 in the federal testing law No Child Left Behind: “The No Child Left Behind Act exacerbates racial and economic segregation in metropolitan areas by rating homogeneous, wealthier school districts as excellent, while labeling urban districts with far more subgroups and more complex demands made by the law as ‘in need of improvement.’ Such labeling of schools and districts encourages families with means to move to wealthy, homogeneous school districts.”

Over the weekend the Columbus, Ohio blog Plunderbund published an investigation of the meaning and impact of Ohio’s Performance Index.  Plunderbund concludes: “If you live in the vast majority of Ohio’s communities (92.7%) where the median income is less than $45,000, your school district has less than 1% of a chance at receiving an A on John Kasich’s report card… Nine years’ worth of data appear to reveal that the best way to improve student test scores is to increase the community’s income.  So we must ask ourselves—What are Ohio’s Ohio’s Plunderbund Examines Correlation of School District Ratings with Family Income | janresseger:

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: Philly's cancerous approach to school funding

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: Philly's cancerous approach to school funding:

Philly's cancerous approach to school funding

As if making schools dependent on property taxes wasn't bad enough, now Philadelphia Public Schools will have to rely on cigarette sales just to make it through the year. Without the regressive $2-a-pack cigarette tax increase passed by the legislature and signed by Gov. Corbett last week, the city schools and schools throughout the state are facing more draconian cuts in October. Much of the revenue generated by the new tax will be used to expand the already swelling ranks of privately-run charter schools in the city.

This from The Philadelphia Public School Notebook:

 Something is seriously wrong with this picture. Pennsylvania is not a poor state and is situated in one of the richest countries in the world. But many districts can’t provide our children with school personnel we once took for granted. Not to mention books, technology – and in some cases, soap and toilet paper.

That’s not just a Pennsylvania problem. The United States is unusual among industrialized countries in having it backward: We spend the fewest education dollars on the neediest students. If we want to spend tax dollars wisely and get results, we need to flip that script.

Three years of Rahm is enough... Andy Shaw, President & CEO of the BGA, tries to give a balanced assessment of the mayor's first three years. But he can't help conclude that Rahm's positives are mostly "low-hanging fruit" with "limited progress on the more daunting Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: Philly's cancerous approach to school funding:

Teachers' Unions, Democracy, & Risk-Taking - Bridging Differences - Education Week

Teachers' Unions, Democracy, & Risk-Taking - Bridging Differences - Education Week:

Teachers' Unions, Democracy, & Risk-Taking

By Deborah Meier on September 30, 2014 9:06 AM

Deborah Meier continues her conversation with Leo Casey today. 

Dear Leo (and Readers),

Yes, indeed, democracy is nonnegotiable, except ...  democracy is a constant negotiation, a balancing act, which never gets it quite right. 

The role of labor unions is a fundamental part of that balancing act. Nothing can replace it—as you rightly take note. It is a fundamental foundation of democracy, as long as there is labor to be done.

But  democracy is not a recipe that can be followed whether we are talking about schools, governments, or unions. And at times there are difficult choices—trade-offs—to decide between. For example, how do we create schools that represent democratically the views and votes of all their essential constituents, the parents who send their kids to them, the citizens who fund them and who are affected by their work, the staff of the school—professionals and nonprofessionals—and, of course, students of varying age, expertise, and wisdom. Who should decide who serves as principal?  They each have a strong case to make on their important and essential role. Yet ...  

How do we respond if the citizens supporting the school want to teach ideas and engage in practices that we think undermine democracy—not to mention just plain good sense? (Re. climate change, evolution, religious dogmas, historical "truth," etc.) What about when professional teachers decide to use the school to promote their own ideological message—even one you and I might agree with, Leo?

We struggled with each and every one of these points in creating the governing rules of Mission Hill School, the only school I was part of that had the official/legal freedom to carry out some pretty far-out ideas. We did it more informally at Central Park East, and somewhere in between informal and formal at Central Park East Secondary School where, like Mission Hill, we wrote out our agreements as faculty and signed them (or revised them) annually, and distributed them to all parents and other interested parties.

At Mission Hill we also created a semi-powerful board of directors that gave substantial power to each constituency. The latter with both the union's blessing and management's. In fact, all these schools (and the many others they spawned in New York and around the nation) had the support of their teachers' unions and some level of support from the city government—to truly break old molds. Yet  each chose somewhat different trade-offs, and all did so in the name of democracy. Is that OK?

The unions I've belonged to and supported faced the same dilemma, and the teachers' unions have hardly been the worst examples when it comes to trade-offs.  We know that many unions, like Teachers' Unions, Democracy, & Risk-Taking - Bridging Differences - Education Week:

Teaching U.S. History in a Failing School (Part 2) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

Teaching U.S. History in a Failing School (Part 2) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice:

Teaching U.S. History in a Failing School (Part 2)

How to interpret the three history lessons I watched Mark Allison, a veteran teacher, teach?

Allison had prepared an interactive lesson with a series of slides on the Civil Rights movement. He asked his students to inspect each slide carefully and tell what they saw and speculate, alright hypothesize, about what the facts they see may add up to. He completed the lesson within the 40 minutes allotted to him in the bell schedule.

The lesson reflected his passion for the subject (a glass case filled with civil rights photos along one wall of the room) and for his students (one wall of student photos in  his classes). Before during and after the lesson, students responded to his requests and questions.  Students did engage in the activities he designed for them. At no time in any of the three lessons I observed were students defiant, unresponsive, or dulled into inactivity. The rapport between teacher and students as he went through the lesson prodding them to apply their present experiences to the past was evident to me.

Were there someone else in the room besides me, say, the principal, a district official, or another teacher there to judge his performance, surely that evaluator could find items to praise and holes in how and what Allison taught in these three lessons.

Perhaps, that observer might have assessed Allison’s performance in the way that Becky Reed, a Delaware social studies teacher did in a comment for this post:

I think this represents exactly how I would have taught a lesson 25 years ago (okay, maybe 15). I would have been very proud of the activity that took me an entire evening to create, time that I could have spent with my family. In reflection (then) I would have thought the lesson was a success; students were engaged, discussion in small groups was apparent, primary sources were used, and students “got” that the Civil Rights Era was about freedom and equality.Sadly, I think that many administrators would have rated this lesson as an Teaching U.S. History in a Failing School (Part 2) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice:

NYC Educator: What Does UFT Leadership Stand For?

NYC Educator: What Does UFT Leadership Stand For?:

What Does UFT Leadership Stand For?

We know that President Michael Mulgrew loves Common Core, because he clearly stated he'd punch anyone who tried to take it away from him. He then ridiculed those who said Gates had anything to do with it, though Gates clearly pumped hundreds of millions into it, several in the direction of teacher unions. While ridiculing Gates' involvement was juvenile and absurd, and while the overwhelming majority of New Yorkers disagree with Mulgrew, at least we know it's something he stands for.

Does leadership stand for parity with other city unions? Apparently not, since they all got raises in 2010, and it's OK for UFT members to wait until 2020. Perhaps leadership feels money is worth the same in 2020 that it is in 2010. Although a dispirited membership swallowed this contract, not everyone concurs. In fact, I just bought a car, and when I asked the dealer if I could put off payment interest-free until 2020, he didn't see it as a viable option. I won't publish his precise remark here, as this is a family blog.

Does leadership stand for unity, as in union? I'm gonna have to say no, since very worst aspect of the new contract is limited due process for ATR teachers. While Mulgrew stood up and said some teachers complained 3020a took too long, no one I know who's gone through it has complained he or she was given too much time to present a defense. ATR teachers will get one day, and according to Mulgrew, they can face dismissal if two principals complain they were shouting in the hall.

Does leadership stand for rational argument? I'm gonna have to say no, since the contract was sold largely via logical fallacies. One of the questioners at the DA (one who Mulgrew did not shout down), after telling Mulgrew what a swell guy he was, asked what would happen if the contract were not approved. Mulgrew launched right into an oft-repeated appeal to fear, that we'd have to get in line behind 150 other unions. He neglected to point out that would not be the case if he had not negotiated such a substandard contract.

A popular argument to those of us who opposed the contract was that we opposed teacher empowerment. That's a classic strawman and it's ridiculous. We opposed precisely what I said we opposed, and no matter how many committees there are to negotiate how junk science and teacher detention are conducted, those were the more pressing issues.

Does leadership stand for placing ATRs back in the classroom? A ten year contract suggests otherwise. Does leadership stand for ATRs having a NYC Educator: What Does UFT Leadership Stand For?:

Brown wraps up ed bills, leaves some heads shaking :: SI&A Cabinet Report

Brown wraps up ed bills, leaves some heads shaking :: SI&A Cabinet Report :: The Essential Resource for Superintendents and the Cabinet:

SEPTEMBER 30, 2014

Brown wraps up ed bills, leaves some heads shaking

by Kimberly Beltran

(Calif.) Gov. Jerry Brown has vetoed a bill that would have made kindergarten mandatory while at the same time signing one intended to show the overwhelming boost that optional year gives kids headed to first grade.

It has been a busy few days for the governor, reviewing hundreds of pieces of legislation – including a stack of education bills – requiring his approval by the end of today.

Those he signed into law over the weekend and Monday include one that removes “willful defiance” as a reason to suspend or expel a student, and another that adds sex trafficking prevention education to the K-12 health curriculum.

Brown also vetoed a plan to allow districts to include sports participation data in their accountability plans as evidence of good school climate. But it is his rejection of Democratic Assemblywoman Joan Buchanan’s AB 1444 – the mandatory kindergarten bill – that is likely to generate more disappointment given the overwhelming sentiment behind it.

“Most children already attend kindergarten, and those that don’t may be enrolled in other educational or developmental programs that are deemed more appropriate for them by their families,” Brown wrote in his veto message. “I would prefer to let parents determine what is best for their children, rather than mandate an entirely new grade level.”

The call to make kindergarten compulsory for all California students before they can enter first grade is part of a broader push to beef up all early learning programs, both here and across the nation.

Buoyed by reams of evidence that the education a child receives in the first five years of life is critical to his or her future success, leaders from President Barack Obama to governors and state legislators have launched initiatives aimed at providing high-quality early learning opportunities to every child from birth to age five.

Current law requires that everyone between the ages of six and 18 attend school full-time. AB 1444 would have maintained the age-eligibility condition, meaning a parent could wait until their child turned six to enroll him or her in school, but that six-year-old would have to start in kindergarten – something opponents of the bill argued would be detrimental to children.

The bill would have affected a relatively small number of students. The California Department of Education estimates that only 28,000 students enrolled in first grade in the 2011-12 school year – 5.7 percent of all first graders – didn’t attended kindergarten the prior year.

Brown did sign, however, AB 1719, by Assemblymember Shirley Weber, D-San Diego, which requires public school agencies, beginning next school year, to “provide an annual report to the State Brown wraps up ed bills, leaves some heads shaking :: SI&A Cabinet Report :: The Essential Resource for Superintendents and the Cabinet:

Yoga benefits the whole student

(Calif.) What many children’s yoga instructors call the “frog pose” tones young legs, increases hamstring flexibility and improves heart health. It’s also just one of a number of poses a student may learn during yoga sessions springing up in classrooms across the country.

by Alisha Kirby / 6h 

Evaluating Gates via His Microsoft Failure | deutsch29

Evaluating Gates via His Microsoft Failure | deutsch29:

Evaluating Gates via His Microsoft Failure

September 30, 2014

Billionaire Bill Gates has been buying his version of American public education for years now. His first major *reform* effort began in 2000 and involved chopping large urban high schools into smaller schools. It was his solution of choice for several years.  He abandoned the idea in 2006 after it had been found “less successful than hoped” according to the Seattle Times. (Documented in chapter 23 of A Chronicle of Echoes and also discussed in this post.)

For Gates, the small schools failure was an inconvenience and a disappointment. (He wanted to “scale” the results.) For the school districts left holding the bag, it was incredibly disruptive.

Gates actively advances a spectrum of so-called reforms that interest him, including grading teachers using student test scores (in order to dump the “ineffective” teachers), merit pay, increased class sizes, longer school day and year, data systems to “track progress,” charter school fondness, and, of course, “fewer, clearer, higher standards”–an idea Gates publicly advanced in November 2008, in the months following his decision to bankroll the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) because Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) President Gene Wilhoit and CCSS “lead architect” David Coleman asked Gates to pay for it.

Interestingly, Gates notes the “need” for CCSS as a “standard” for grading teachers:

The first step in identifying effective teaching has to be setting fewer, clearer, higher standards that are aligned with the goal of graduating students from high school college-ready. You can’t compare teachers if they’re not pursuing a common standard.[Emphasis added.]

Must I write how stupid this idea is?

Teachers do pursue “common standards” in teaching students. It’s just that such “common standards” are often of a higher order that tends to defy quantification. Included among them are teaching and learning for the sheer joy of it and equipping students to make choices that might lead to a self-fulfillment that leads, in turn, to students becoming productive, engaged members of society.

Profit-grabbers like Pearson cannot test such lofty goals.

Nevertheless, billionaire boy Bill is only interested in that which might be quantified– but only as such lends support for his own preferences. Consider this statement from the same November 2008 speech linked above:

A good education means completing a postsecondary degree.

Gates did not complete a postsecondary degree. However, he has determined that this narrow view of “a good education” must apply to all others.

Gates continues in his speech by stating, “we are determined to follow the evidence.” Evaluating Gates via His Microsoft Failure | deutsch29:

Special Late Nite Cap UPDATE 9-29-14 #BATsACT #edreform #EDCHAT #P2

Nite Cap UPDATE

UPDATE UPDATE UPDATE UPDATE

CORPORATE ED REFORM

“I must do right by the children… I refuse to administer the PARCC.”

“I must do right by the children…” Do we realize that saving our children requires that we ALL “must do right by the children”? I know Peggy Robertson, a mom and a Colorado teacher who helped found United Opt Out. I have more respect for her as a human being and as a teacher than I have for any of the bought-and-paid-for politicians who shill for the profit making CCSS (Yes, it is private. Yes, it

20 by Ken Previti / 23min 

Some thoughts on teaching

This past weekend I spent almost ten hours reading, commenting upon and correcting student papers.  I teach freshman in Government (including one section of AP) and seniors in AP Government (3 sections).  While the skill level and maturity of course varies, one thing that is unfortunately common is that they have little experience of thinking outside the box and of supporting an argument.  That is

3 by rss@dailykos.com ... / 32min

Sandy Hook_Forgotten, Classified, Covered Up?

Is there any parent of a child, elementary school age or younger, who would be satisfied with just looking at the photo of the face of your child for identification purposes if he or she were murdered along with 19 other children in an elementary school mass shooting? Probably not, correct? You would need to be restrained by more than a couple of burly police to prevent you from seeing and at leas

1 by Occupy Bob / 37min 

Community colleges can offer bachelor’s

Up to 15 community colleges can begin offering bachelor's degrees under a law signed Sunday by Gov. Jerry Brown. The law sets up a pilot program allowing campuses to offer the advanced degrees in vocational occupational. [[ This is a content summary only. Visit the Edsource Today website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

by Michelle Maitre / 40min

“‘Reinventing Writing’: An Interview With Vicki Davis”

‘Reinventing Writing’: An Interview With Vicki Davis is my latest post at Education Week Teacher. Vicki Davis, known in education technology circles around the world as “Cool Cat Teacher,” is one of the Web’s most popular writers about ed tech. She recently agreed to answer a few questions about her new book, Reinventing Writing. Here are some excerpts:

6 by Larry Ferlazzo / 36min 

Publisher Offering 20% Discount On My Three Student Motivation Books

As regular readers know, the third book in my student motivation “trilogy” will be published in early March of next year. My publisher, Routledge, is now offering a twenty percent discount on pre-orders for that volume, and offering the same deal on my first two books, Helping Students Motivate Themselves and Self-Driven Learning, until December 31st. You can read about the discount here, or jus

5 by Larry Ferlazzo / 12min hide  //  save

The Best Resources For Learning About The Hong Kong Protests

© 2011 Thomas Galvez, Flickr | CC-BY | via Wylio Massive protests are rocking Hong Kong right now, and I’ve brought together some related resources that I will continue to expand in the coming days and weeks. You might also be interested in The Best Sites For Learning About Protests In History. Here are my choices for The Best Resources For Learning About The Hong Kong Protests: Protests Have Thei

13 by Larry Ferlazzo / 1h 

Marie Corfield: UPDATE: The real story behind Lily's trip to Camden

Marie Corfield: UPDATE: The real story behind Lily's trip to Camden: UPDATE: The real story behind Lily's trip to CamdenTwo weeks ago NEA President Lily Eskelsen Garcia visited New Jersey as part of her 50-state Back to School Tour. I wrote about her visit and meeting with NJ ed bloggers here, here and here.One of her stops was Pyne Poynt Middle School in Camden which is also home to the co-locate

1 by mike simpson / 3h hide  //  save

Nite Cap 9-29-14 #BATsACT #RealEdTalk #EDCHAT

James Baldwin said it best: "For these are all our children, and we will profit by or pay for whatever they become."A BIG EDUCATION APE NITE CAPA Prof Debunks Standardized Testing & Pearson Strikes BackA Prof Debunks Standardized Testing & Pearson Strikes Back: A Prof Debunks Standardized Testing & Pearson Strikes BackDon't Tread on My PROFITS! Rebellions sometimes begin slow

4 by mike simpson / 5h 

Marie Corfield: UPDATE: The real story behind Lily's trip to Camden

Marie Corfield: UPDATE: The real story behind Lily's trip to Camden:

UPDATE: The real story behind Lily's trip to Camden

Two weeks ago NEA President Lily Eskelsen Garcia visited New Jersey as part of her 50-state Back to School Tour. I wrote about her visit and meeting with NJ ed bloggers here, here and here.

One of her stops was Pyne Poynt Middle School in Camden which is also home to the co-located Mastery Charter School. While the NJ state assembly passed an amendment to the Urban Hope Act today which gives charter schools greater ability toexpand in take over public education in Camden, I had a conversation with someone who was in close proximity to Lily's visit. This person asked not to be identified. Here is their story (my comments are in red):

The entire time Lily was visiting Pyne Poynt she was followed around by two of Superintendent Paymon Rouhanifard's "people".

When Lily was in the round table discussion with the students, she asked them what they would change about their school. They wanted to know why the Mastery Charter School half of the building was freshly painted, but their half wasn't. One girl said she wanted her science labs back. She really liked science, but the labs were given to the charter school. When questioned about this, the principal said they would be getting science lab 'carts'.

(Will those carts be equipped with running water?)

The parent group that came to talk to Lily was originally told they couldn't meet with her, but they insisted. They had been waiting hours and weren't going away quietly. They were ushered into a classroom with a security guard who was under strict orders to "keep them contained". They were told they had 15 minutes with Lily. One parent told the security guard, "I'm not talking with you in the room", because she felt he would report their conversation back to the "higher-ups".

After about 5 minutes, the principal told them they had to leave the classroom because a class was coming in, at which point they all walked across the street. The group of concerned parents were then free to really express how they felt and they were very,very angry at the school district.

**********

This version of the events is not surprising given everything Gov. Christie and his Marie Corfield: UPDATE: The real story behind Lily's trip to Camden: