Ed Notes Online: Sea Change: Opt-Out Catching Fire in Communities of Color?

Ed Notes Online: Sea Change: Opt-Out Catching Fire in Communities of Color?:

Sea Change: Opt-Out Catching Fire in Communities of Color?

Of the 60 plus people in the audience, at least 70 percent were people of color, with the majority being African American, and over half the group was under 40 years of age.

Mark Naison reports on The BK Nation Forum on Testing and the Opt Out Movement, held at Judson Memorial Church in lower Manhattan Wed. night.

 [It} represented a powerful challenge to education policy makers who claim testing is a civil rights measure and that the opt out movement is strictly a white middle class initative.

Although the panel was excellent, including people like Jamaal Bowman, Aixa Rodriguez, Jesse Turner and Shamma Dee, the audience's commentary and participation made the evening special.
.....Mark Naison, BK Nation Forum Defuses Stereotypes About Opt Out as a "White Movement"

If opt-out catches on in NYC by growing beyond the relatively small white middle class and into black communities panic will range throughout the nation.

I learned first hand about the potential when PTA President Shamma Dee contacted Change the Stakes for a speaker to come to her school of mostly students of color to speak to a PTA meeting about opt-out. I was drafted and was so impressed not only with Shamma, who since then has become a leading voice for opt out, but with the large turnout.

I reported on this issue - that high stakes tests have an even greater negative impact on the black community - 

High stakes testing impact on the black community - so-called civil rights test supporters - ignore at your peril

I believe the opt out movement will begin to catch on in middle class black communities just as it did in middle class white communities. I am not sure if it will then spread to the poorer communities this year where there is often less parent Ed Notes Online: Sea Change: Opt-Out Catching Fire in Communities of Color?:

Education Writer Alfie Kohn on Leaving Behind No Child Left Behind Behind | janresseger

Education Writer Alfie Kohn on Leaving Behind No Child Left Behind Behind | janresseger:

Education Writer Alfie Kohn on Leaving Behind No Child Left Behind Behind

On several occasions over the holidays, I was reminded of something I already knew: most people don’t want to wade in the weedy marsh of education policy.  If the mainstream press says the new Every Student Succeeds Act is a big improvement over No Child Left Behind, lots of people say, “Wow!  We can cross that worry off our list!”

Unfortunately things are going to be a whole lot more complicated.

Much of the thoughtful analysis of the new federal education law has been written for the education wonks who will parse and compare NCLB and ESSA and argue about what the Department of Education will put into the administrative rules.  Here, however, is education writer Alfie Kohn’s short, incisive, and well written commentary for the non-expert about the meaning of the new ESSA.  Everybody ought to read it, because Kohn so intelligently summarizes the  issues.

Here’s what Kohn says about No Child Left Behind, in response to those who liked NCLB and now worry that the new law waters down the old law’s strong federal pressure for accountability: “While the inadequacy and inequity certainly were (and are) inexcusable, NCLB was never a reasonable response  Indeed, as many of us predicted at the start, it did far more harm than good; in general, and with respect to addressing disparities between black and white, rich and poor, in particular. Standardized testing was never necessary to tell us which schools were failing.  Heck, you could just drive by them and make a reasonable guess…  For years, I’ve been challenging NCLB defenders to name a single school anywhere in the country whose inadequacy was a secret until students were subjected to yet another wave of standardized tests.  But testing isn’t just superfluous; it was, and remains, immensely damaging, to low-income students most of all.”

So what about those who are celebrating the new law because, they imagine, it will reduce standardized testing?  “(T)he outrageous and incalculably damaging reality of testing students Education Writer Alfie Kohn on Leaving Behind No Child Left Behind Behind | janresseger:

The Puzzle of School Reform Cycles | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

The Puzzle of School Reform Cycles | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice:

The Puzzle of School Reform Cycles

Anyone over the age of 40 who is familiar with public schools knows that similar reforms come again and again as if policy makers suffered amnesia. Consider, for example, the fundamental (and familiar) question that has launched periods of reform like changing seasons: Should all students study the same content and acquire the same skills?

The policy question was asked initially in the 1890s–a politically conservativeera–and answered yes (see here and here). Then two decades later after World War I, policymakers working in a liberal political climate, asked the question and answered no. Students should be able to choose whether they want to go to college, work in white- and blue-collar jobs (see here and here). Then in the late 1950s in the middle of the Cold War–a politically conservative era, the policy question arose again and the answer was yes; all students should study rigorous subject matter in math, sciences, and social studies (see here and here). Between the 1960s and the 1970s, policymakers asked the question again, and answered it yes at one time and no at another (see here and here).

And since the early 1980s ( a Nation at Risk report being a marker of that politically conservative era) the curriculum standards, testing, and accountability movement now including the Common Core standards, all students are expected to learn the same content and skills.

In each instance since the 1890s, then, as times became conservative and liberal, school curricula cycled back and forth between all students studying the same content and skills and students (and their parents) being able to choose what content and skills they want to focus on.

Similar reform cycles on how best to teach (teacher-centered or student-centered) have marked policy debates then and now (see here). Ditto for how The Puzzle of School Reform Cycles | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice:

Forest wants revamp to too-negative charter school report | KSL.com

Forest wants revamp to too-negative charter school report | KSL.com:

Forest wants revamp to too-negative charter school report

 RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — State education leaders sidetracked a report describing the overall student population at North Carolina's charter schools as whiter and more affluent than student bodies at traditional public schools after Lt. Gov. Dan Forest complained it was too negative.

Forest said Thursday he wanted the State Board of Education's annual report on the status of charter schools rewritten because it lacked sufficient balance. The board was scheduled to approve the report to state lawmakers on Thursday ahead of a deadline next week specified in state law. However, school board members decided Wednesday to postpone a vote.

Forest, a supporter of the alternative form of public school, said that in the three years since his election and addition to the state school board, "it's rare that you ever hear a good word about charter schools, even though there's a lot of charters doing some great things out there."

Charter schools operate under fewer rules than other public schools, and some parents believe they offer a better academic and social experience.

Forest said a primary concern about the report was that it cited a study last year by Duke University researchers who wrote that "the charter schools in North Carolina are increasingly serving the interests of relatively able white students in racially imbalanced schools."

The report, prepared by the charter school office of the state Department of Public Instruction, said while black and white children attend charter schools and traditional public schools in similar proportions overall, individual charter schools are more racially segmented.

That could be because more charter schools are being organized in poor neighborhoods that serve heavily minority populations, a detail left out of the draft report, Forest said.

"In my mind, we need to have some qualifications on some of the statements that I Forest wants revamp to too-negative charter school report | KSL.com:

Ed Notes Online: Video From Philly: Who Are WE?

Ed Notes Online: Video From Philly: Who Are WE?:

Video From Philly: Who Are WE?

This wonderful video is just another reason why MORE's love our colleagues in Philly in Caucus of Working Educators, a social justice caucus challenging the Randi-supported leadership of the union. In a very short time as a caucus, which grew out of connection to our local NYCORE, they have built a caucus with wide outreach. We will know just how far they have reached after the election next month. The current leadership has been stewards of the almost total destruction of the public school system in Philly. The result might not be different but WE will put up a fight like in Chicago. 

Members of the Caucus of Working Educators of the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers (PFT) answer the question "Who are WE?" For more information http://www.workingeducators.org/

https://youtu.be/CJrI05_X-jw

Why Kindergarten Is The New First Grade : NPR Ed : NPR

Why Kindergarten Is The New First Grade : NPR Ed : NPR:

Why Kindergarten Is The New First Grade

"What are some of the things that the monsters like to eat in this story?" teacher Marisa McGee asks a trio of girls sitting at her table.

McGee teaches kindergarten at Walker Jones Elementary in Washington D.C. Today's lesson: a close reading of the book, What Do Monsters Eat?

"They like to eat cake," says one girl.

"I noticed you answered in a complete sentence," McGee says. "Can you tell me something else?"

"Stinky socks!"

McGee follows with a line you might not expect in a kindergarten class: "Can you show me the page where you found that?"

Textual evidence. Complete sentences. Welcome to kindergarten in 2016. It's not quite what McGee, 29, says she was expecting when she started.

"When I came into kindergarten, down from first grade, I was like: Yes! What can I order for dramatic play?" McGee says. "And I was told: Kindergarteners don't do dramatic play any more."

If you have young kids in school, or talk with teachers of young children, you've likely heard the refrain — that something's changed in the early grades. Schools seem to expect more of their youngest students, academically, while giving them less time to spend in self-directed and creative play.

A big new study provides the first national, empirical data to back up the anecdotes. University of Virginia researchers Daphna Bassok, Scott Latham and Anna Rorem Why Kindergarten Is The New First Grade : NPR Ed : NPR:

Let's Make 2016 a Progressive Year for our Schools and Communities | The Progressive

Let's Make 2016 a Progressive Year for our Schools and Communities | The Progressive:

Let's Make 2016 a Progressive Year for our Schools and Communities

How can we make 2016 the year we reinvent public education? It’s a tall order. But if we set a few key intentions for our work, we have a shot at making real progress.

For starters: let us please, PLEASE not get so caught up in the Presidential race that we ignore state and local elections. That might be hard, given that the 2016 election basically started in 2014, and has only gotten uglier and weirder as the months wear on. But progressives have long had the bad habit of over-focusing on federal and Presidential politics at the expense of down-ticket candidates and the important public officials who work in state and municipal government. This is a problem in all issue areas, but it’s a particularly big deal in education, given the intensely local nature of school governance.

Especially now that the Every Student Succeeds Act has replaced No Child Left Behind as the law of the land, we need to focus on recruiting, developing, and electing local- and state-level officials who are strong advocates for full and fair funding of schools, and for equitable education policies. Likewise, we need to vote out anyone who is not making our students and our schools a top priority. Are your school board representatives turning public schools over to private interests? Organize them out of a job. Is your city council authorizing tax breaks for big business while local schoolchildren don’t have a library? Send them packing.

Make no mistake: whether it’s a local, state, or national race, it’s hard work to elect a candidate, and even harder to unseat or recall bad electeds already in office. But we draw on the same time and energy to do any of those things, and it’s our local and state leaders who ultimately control what happens to our local

- See more at: http://www.progressive.org/news/2016/01/188495/lets-make-2016-progressive-year-our-schools-and-communities#sthash.Jn8sm9Vn.dpuf

Randi Weingarten Tells Feds: Your Opt-Out Actions Fly in the Face of ESSA - Politics K-12 - Education Week

Randi Weingarten Tells Feds: Your Opt-Out Actions Fly in the Face of ESSA - Politics K-12 - Education Week:

Randi Weingarten Tells Feds: Your Opt-Out Actions Fly in the Face of ESSA

Attention John King and Company: The American Federation of Teachers is not happy with the way that you are handling opt-outs in this new, post-No Child Left Behind era.

Both the NCLB law and the one that replaced it, the brand-new Every Student Succeeds Act, call for 95 percent of students to participate in state assessments. Under NCLB, any school that didn't meet that threshold automatically failed. But under ESSA, states get to decide how to handle schools where fewer than 95 percent of kids take tests—including schools where lots of parents decide to opt their kids out. (More on the ins-and-outs of ESSA here.)

The Education Department made it very clear at the end of December that they are taking that requirement super seriously. On Dec. 22, they sent a letter to state chiefs saying, essentially, they need a plan for schools with high opt-outs, or you face federal sanctions. That letter gave states suggested actions, most of which represented pretty meaningful steps, like requiring districts to come up with a plan to fix low participation rates. (Not on the list were less dramatic—but maybe just as permissible—steps like taking a tiny fraction of a percentage off a school's overall score if their opt-out rates are really high.)

The department's letter did not sit well with the AFT. The union penned its own missive to King, the acting secretary, that included plenty of smack-talk from President Randi Weingarten. Here's a snippet (full letter here):

As you are well aware, while the new ESSA requires states to test 95 percent of students, it allows them to decide how they will factor this requirement into their accountability system ... Make no mistake, the opt-out movement--the reason that so many states did not meet the 95 percent participation requirement in 2014-15--was a referendum on this administration's policies that created the culture of overtesting and punishment. Your October 2015 "Testing Action Plan" admitted as much, and the overwhelmingly bipartisan passage of ESSA was a strong signal that the page must be turned on these policies.

And the AFT points out that the Dec. 22 letter on opt-outs came just days after another letter, on Dec. 18, telling states that the feds were ready to move towards ESSA and jettison the pieces of NCLB that aren't part of the new law:

States are now working out how they will move to new accountability systems, and they need the flexibility and support offered in your Dec. 18 letter, not the threat of sanctions contained in the Dec. 22 letter.

Which states might have an opt-out issue? The department has sent warning letters to 13 states: California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Idaho, Illinois, Maine, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Rhode Island, Washington, and Wisconsin. More from Andrew here.  Randi Weingarten Tells Feds: Your Opt-Out Actions Fly in the Face of ESSA - Politics K-12 - Education Week:

With A Brooklyn Accent: Support for Co-Naming Lymon Place "Elmo Hope Way"

With A Brooklyn Accent: Support for Co-Naming Lymon Place "Elmo Hope Way":

Support for Co-Naming Lymon Place "Elmo Hope Way"

Dear District Manager Dudley

As founder and director of the Bronx African American History Project, I would like to offer my enthusiastic support for efforts to co-name Lymon Place, "Elmo Hope Way." This is an important part of the BAAHP's efforts to have the jazz history of Morrisania commemorated so that a new generation of Bronx residents can understand an important portion of their borough's musical history.

Elmo Hope was a brilliant jazz pianist and composer, a leader within the "Hard Bop" jazz tradition, who spent many of his most creative years as a resident of Lymon Place. One of the people we interviewed for the Bronx African American History Project, Jacqueline ("Jackie") Bonneau Smith, talked with great passion about the hours she spent at Elmo Hope's apartment on Lymon place watching him jam with her uncle, Thelonious Monk. She also described Elmo Hope's encouragement as an important influence on her own decision to become a musician and composer
Elmo Hope played with some of the great musicians of his era, among them Thelonious Monk, Bud Powell, and Lou Donaldson, and his recordings are prized by jazz historians and jazz afficianados. We feature his song "Hot Sauce" on the "Music of the Bronx" CD we play at Bronx African American History Project lectures and tours.

I look forward to this great musician being commemorated with a street renaming as has been done for Maxine Sullivan and Henry "Red" Allen.
It is deeply gratifying for us to see the Bronx African American History Project's research on Bronx Jazz History be transformed into living reminders of a great tradition.

Sincerely.
Dr Mark Naison
Professor of African American Studies and History
Fordham University
Founder and Director, Bronx African American History Project

With A Brooklyn Accent: Support for Co-Naming Lymon Place "Elmo Hope Way":

All Things Education: From Duncan to King

All Things Education: From Duncan to King:

From Duncan to King

Most regular readers of the blog know that for the most part I have not been a fan of the policies of (recently) former Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, even if I think his intentions were good. Too much emphasis on testing, too much arbitrariness, too punitive, too much over-reach, too little thought given to the impacts of privatization, and too little respect for democratic processes.

But he has used his bully pulpit to speak up about some issues that matter, and it is my hope that he will be one of those officials who turns out to do better things out of office than s/he did while in office. The content of his final speech in office, as reported in the Washington Post, leads me to believe he will do some work towards reducing gun violence. I hope so.

Arne Duncan used his last speech as U.S. Education Secretary to draw attention to violence that claims the lives of thousands of children each year, saying that the “greatest frustration” of his seven-year tenure has been Washington’s failure to pass gun control legislation. 

Fighting off tears, Duncan said that 16,000 young people were killed during his first six years in office. “We have to get guns out of the wrong people’s hands. We have to make sure our babies are safe,” said Duncan, who plans to step down on Thursday. 

He went on to draw connections between street violence and high school dropout rates in America’s poorest communities, saying that both are the result of hopelessness that children feel when they grow up believing that they have a better chance of dying young than going to college or getting a job.

Meanwhile, the record of his successor, Acting Education Secretary John King, while serving as New York State's Education Commissioner gives me. . . pause:

King was just as embattled, if not more, in New York as education commissioner for some of the same All Things Education: From Duncan to King:

K12 Inc. Tries to Pivot from Virtual School Failures to Profit from "Non-Managed" Schools | PR Watch

K12 Inc. Tries to Pivot from Virtual School Failures to Profit from "Non-Managed" Schools | PR Watch:

K12 Inc. Tries to Pivot from Virtual School Failures to Profit from "Non-Managed" Schools

If you were a public school and Wall Street didn’t like you that might not seem like such a big deal. What do financiers know about educating children? It’s a big deal, however, if you are K12, Inc., and enticing investors to buy into your low-cost, high yield “cyber school” idea is key to your bottom line.

At K12, Inc.’s stockholder meeting in December, its own investors criticized the schools’ lamentable academic performance and voted down its executives’ proposed salary increases. This is just the latest piece of bad news, which has been coming in rafts for K12 since 2013.

As K12’s executives were being rebuffed by stockholders inside the law offices of Latham & Watkins, in Washington, D.C., outside K12 was picketed by members of the California Teachers Association for more or less the same list of educational shortcomings, as Diane Ravitch noted.

Some editorial boards crow when they receive criticism from two opposing sides of a controversial issue. “If both sides are unhappy we must be doing something right” is the familiar refrain, as if there are only ever two sides to an issue or the sides have equal merit.

In the case of K12, however, it is hard not to wonder how much longer the company can withstand this loud unanimity of animus--even a firm Wall Street insiders like convicted fraudster Michael Milken helped launch, as the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) detailed in "From Junk Bonds to Junk Schools: Cyber Schools Fleece Taxpayers with Phantom Students and Failing Grades."

No major supporters have yet publicly called for pulling the plug, but anti-public education zealots like the billionaire Walton family and the Koch brothers have plenty of other places to invest in to try to bring down “government schools.”

Big, Big Payouts to Execs at Taxpayer Expense

In its recommendation that shareholders vote against the pay proposal, the advisory firm Glass Lewis & Co. said K12 exemplifies a “substantial disconnect between compensation and performance results.” Glass Lewis gave the company an "F" for how it paid its executives compared to peers.

In 2015, K12 CEO Nathaniel Davis was making $5.3 million and CFO James Rhyu was making $3.6 million. Their base salaries were $700,000 and 478,500, respectively, which were dwarfed by additional pay and stock for their “performance.” (See more details on their total compensation in the pdf uploaded below.)

In all, K12's five highest paid executives received a total of more than $12 million in compensation last year. That’s one of the reasons CMD has called K12 Inc.'s former CEO, Ron Packard, the highest paid elementary and secondary school educator in the nation.

Nearly 90% of K12’s revenues--and thus its huge pay for executives--come from Americans’ state or federal tax dollars.

K12 Inc. also pays each member of its Board of Directors between $155,000 and $216,000 annually for a few hours of

- See more at: http://www.prwatch.org/news/2016/01/13009/k12-inc-tries-pivot-virtual-school-failures#sthash.4dHDIGMj.dpuf

CCSF’s accreditor found noncompliant with federal education standards - The San Francisco Examiner : The San Francisco Examiner

CCSF’s accreditor found noncompliant with federal education standards - The San Francisco Examiner : The San Francisco Examiner:

CCSF’s accreditor found noncompliant with federal education standards

City College of San Francisco’s accreditor was out of compliance with federal education standards two years ago and has until next year to prove it has met every standard, the nation’s top education official has ruled.

Acting Secretary of Education John B. King, Jr. on Monday upheld a January 2014 decision by the U.S. Department of Education to find the Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior Colleges noncompliant with two criteria for recognition to accredit community colleges.

In 2014, federal education officials determined that the ACCJC did not demonstrate enough support from educators, and in fact a number of organizations actually submitted written comments expressing disagreement with the ACCJC’s policies and actions.

Federal education officials also found in 2014 that the ACCJC did not comply with its own policies that call for academics to participate on appeal panels and in evaluation teams.

Both findings were upheld in King’s letter on Monday.

“In this case, the Department expressed a reasonable basis for finding ACCJC noncompliant with the regulations,” King wrote.

He added that the commission will remain recognized, but has 12 months to demonstrate its compliance.

The decision by King is the latest blow to the embattled commission, and follows a recent push by the California Community College Board of Governors for state education officials to establish a new model for accrediting California’s 113 community colleges.

“The Secretary of Education’s order raises questions about the long-term future of the Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior Colleges, as it speaks to the acceptance of the organization by educators and colleges,” said Paul Feist, a spokesman for the state CCSF’s accreditor found noncompliant with federal education standards - The San Francisco Examiner : The San Francisco Examiner:

Poor health: when poverty becomes disease | University of California

Poor health: when poverty becomes disease | University of California:

Poor health: when poverty becomes disease

 Talmadge King Jr., MD, dean of the UCSF School of Medicine, tells the story of an ER physician who had lost a document and was searching frantically for it in the garbage bins behind Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center. What he found instead in the mountain of rubbish were crumpled prescription slips that patients had tossed in hospital trash cans throughout the week.

“Going forward, the conversations that ER doctor had with his patients changed. They became, ‘Well, you need these drugs. Which can you afford? How can I help?’ ” relates King. “Often it’s not that the patients aren’t adhering to advice. It’s that they can’t pay for the drugs, didn’t understand why they should take them, or simply that they did not feel the doctor even listened to them.”

Poverty collides with health every day at UCSF, compelling clinicians and scientists to engineer ways to disentangle the two, one complexity at a time. It’s the nurse trying to help a mom living in a single-room-occupancy hotel find refrigeration for her son’s antibiotic before an infection ruptures his second eardrum. Or the scientist gathering data on the toxic effects of stress on unborn children. Or the dentist trying to salvage the graying teeth in a toddler’s mouth – poverty’s most obvious portal.

Each is a temporary fix, merely scratching at the surface of what epidemiologists have long referred to as the “cause of causes” – poverty itself. This year marks the 50th anniversary of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s War on Poverty – part of his Great Society vision, which brought us such programs as Medicare, Medicaid and Head Start. Yet the income discrepancy between rich and poor has not been as wide as it is now since the late 1920s, an era Mark Twain termed the Gilded Age due to the abject poverty that existed beneath a thin veneer of great wealth. Today, from their front-row seats on the health effects of poverty, scientists and clinicians at UCSF are carefully documenting, and trying to blunt, poverty’s debilitating toll as it cycles through families, from one generation to another.

Mounting evidence

“Socioeconomic status is the most powerful predictor of disease, disorder, injury and mortality we have,” says Tom Boyce, MD, chief of UCSF’s Division of Developmental Medicine within the Department of Pediatrics. Socioeconomic status is a term that often includes measurements of income, education, and job prestige – individually or in combination. The predictive power of income alone is perhaps most obvious when considering life expectancy. Impoverished adults live seven to eight years less than those who have incomes four or more times the federal poverty level, which is $11,770 for a one-person household, whether you live in Silicon Valley, the Rust Belt or the rural South.

Discrepancies in life span grow significantly when race enters the equation. Paula Braveman, MD ’79, MPH, director of UCSF’s Center on Social Disparities in Health, points to a recent life-Poor health: when poverty becomes disease | University of California:

What’s behind grad rate increase? - POLITICO

What’s behind grad rate increase? - POLITICO:

What’s behind grad rate increase?

THE PUSH TO RAISE THE GRADUATION RATE: With President Barack Obama expected to trumpet the nation’s record high graduation rate of 82 percent during Tuesday’s State of the Union address [http://politico.pro/1Uzxobi], Morning Education looked at what brought about the recent growth in high school completion after decades of stagnation. Simple answer? Well, there isn’t one, but experts agree it has come about because of hard work at every level, from principals to governors to charities to the federal government. The federal role is debated, but there have been steps taken by both the George W. Bush and Obama White Houses to tackle the problem. Taking a lead from the National Governors Association, Bush Education Secretary Margaret Spellings set a uniform way for states to calculate graduation rates, a method credited with making them account for every student and other steps that the Obama administration built on, said Bob Balfanz, a researcher at Johns Hopkins University. Beyond the federal efforts, there was a growing understanding that, “there’s this subset of kids that are signalling early that they are in trouble and things like chronic absenteeism matter, and things like suspensions matter,” Balfanz said.

Story Continued Below

— What did districts do? Some rolled out early warning systems to help identify struggling students through attendance records and other means years before they were due to walk across the graduation stage. Others created credit recovery programs and hired employees just to work with at-risk students. The period also saw a reduction of “dropout factory” schools with less than 60 percent of students making it to graduation day. (Alliance for Excellent Education says the number declined from 2,007 in 2002 to 1,040 in 2014.) Aside from accountability efforts, John Gomperts, president of America’s Promise, said having the two White Houses behind the problem helped make it a “thing” that the news media covered and communities responded to.

— Despite these gains, Gomperts’ organization and others leading the GradNation effort recently expressed concern [http://politico.pro/1O36RhB] the country for the first time in recent years wasn’t on track to meet their goal of a 90 percent graduation rate by 2020. There have also been questions about whether the bar is set high enough. The group Achieve noted in a recent report [http://bit.ly/1QBau1v] that about half of all states have multiple diploma options, and at least one option falls short of college-and-career ready expectations. “The rate keeps going up, but are we preparing more students for a life after high school? Or, are some states lowering the bar or making it easier to get a diploma?” questioned Chad Colby, a spokesman for Achieve.

— Under the Every Student Succeeds Act, high school graduation rates must be included in state accountability plans. But the Education Department needs to clarify a few issues, such as ensuring that, “graduation rates carry sufficient weight within accountability systems,” said Bob Wise, president of the Alliance for Excellent Education.

IT’S A HAPPY FRIDAY, JAN. 8. It’s Nirvi Shah’s birthday! Tweet her a birthday

Read more: http://www.politico.com/tipsheets/morning-education/2016/01/whats-behind-grad-rate-increase-gop-candidates-to-debate-poverty-issues-president-to-visit-nebraska-louisiana-post-sotu-212074#ixzz3wfZiF6jz

Roanoke Parents Across America fighting to keep charter schools out of Virginia | WSLS

Roanoke organization fighting to keep charter schools out of Virginia | WSLS:

Roanoke organization fighting to keep charter schools out of Virginia

ROANOKE (WSLS 10) – A new budget amendment this year going before the general assembly would make it easier for charter schools to set up shop in Virginia, but one organization in Roanoke is fighting it.

Laura Bowman with Parents Across America says the funding for charter schools would pull money away from the existing public school system.

She says this could hurt already struggling school systems.

“I’d say kind of a myth that choice is going to be the answer. There’s no magic bullet to save education. It’s not high stakes testing, it’s not charter schools, it’s not asinine accountability systems for teachers, it is proven reforms. Small class sizes, individual attention, full and fair funding, certified teachers, parental engagement,” said Bowman.

Senator Mark Obenshain is proposing the amendment.

He says giving the state the power to authorize charter schools in communities would be a good way to support struggling school systems.

“We do have school divisions around Virginia that are really failing our kids, and we have got to make sure that we are providing a world class education to kids without regard to their zip code. If they are trapped in a failing school division owe them, I believe, a moral duty to improve the quality of education and the opportunities that are being provided to these kids and their families,” said Obenshain.

If the amendment passes in the general assembly, it will need to be voted on by the public.

That means you would see it appear on the ballot in November.Roanoke organization fighting to keep charter schools out of Virginia | WSLS:

School Voucher Program Gets a Failing Grade in Louisiana | Care2 Causes

School Voucher Program Gets a Failing Grade in Louisiana | Care2 Causes:

School Voucher Program Gets a Failing Grade in Louisiana

Many advocates of school choice rightly point out that students from wealthy families already have school choice because wealthy families have more options when selecting where to live and where to educate their children. Implementing school choice for all other students, advocates argue, levels the playing field and gives students from poorer families the opportunity to succeed.

A new working paper out this week raises some doubts about this argument. In a study of a Louisiana program providing children of low-income families vouchers to attend participating private schools, researchers found that attending one of those schools negatively affected students’ academic performances.

The program targets students from families with income below 250 percent of the poverty line because these students face the greatest barriers to scholastic success. Conveniently for researchers and anyone else interested in meaningful data on education reforms, the vouchers were handed out based on a random lottery. This allows us to look at how students eligible for the program performed when they received the vouchers and when they didn’t, with no other meaningful difference between the two groups.

The results of this natural experiment are not encouraging. According to the researchers, the students who attended private schools through the voucher system had math scores that were 0.41 standard deviations lower than their public school peers. Reading, science and social studies scores were also lower.

Younger students appeared to suffer a greater academic shortfall than older students. Overall, students who received vouchers were 50 percent more likely to receive failing marks. Those who thought they had “won” the lottery by getting to attend private schools found themselves with the worse deal.

This is particularly disappointing, because the students who received vouchers mostly came from low-performing school districts. This means that we can’t attribute the difference in performance simply to excellent public schools.

But the researchers did find that private schools that accepted vouchers were more likely to have declining enrollment relative to private schools not accepting vouchers. This suggests that underperforming private schools, which are therefore more likely to struggle retaining students, are those that are most likely to participate in the program. This would explain why the program failed in

Read more: http://www.care2.com/causes/school-voucher-program-gets-a-failing-grade-in-louisiana.html#ixzz3wfXDL7QT

Deliberately deceiving the public on Common Core | NewBostonPost

Deliberately deceiving the public on Common Core | NewBostonPost:

Deliberately deceiving the public on Common Core

On Nov. 17, 2015, the Massachusetts Board of Elementary and Secondary Education voted not to move forward with the PARCC test (a national Common Core-based test) and instead to adopt a “hybrid” test called MCAS 2.0. Although it was widely reported that Massachusetts had dumped Common Core, the move by the Board was, in fact, a deliberate effort to make the public believe that the state had scrapped the controversial national standards in favor of the state’s own superior pre-Common Core standards.

Nobody – not the Board, the Commissioner, nor the Secretary of Education – mentioned that the hybrid test will have to be based on Common Core because of the Board’s 2010 vote to dump the state’s own standards in mathematics and English Language Arts and make Common Core’s standards the state’s official standards in these two subjects.

Reporters in the Bay State and across the country all seemed to assume that because PARCC was abandoned, so was Common Core. But in a blog on Dec. 1, 2015, Michael Petrilli, president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, admitted that what had happened was not a significant substantive change, but rather a “rebranding for political purposes.” So far, the media have not sought to explain how they were all deceived in November by the vote, or how many citizens have been deceived by their own public officials, not only in Massachusetts but elsewhere as well.

Although the states that adopted Common Core’s standards did so legally (usually by a vote of their state boards of education), many state policymakers deliberately minimized public awareness and discussion of the standards’ academic deficits in order to ensure their passage and continue their use.

Sometimes state officials chose to deceive the public in outright defiance of the expressed will of the legislature to revise or eliminate Common Core’s standards. (This was the case in South Carolina, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Louisiana, and New Jersey.)

Although “rebranding” is the generic name of the strategy, the specific mechanisms used by state departments of education to ensure they maintain Common Core or Common Core-aligned standards has differed from state to state.

The following are a list of just some of the popular ploys that have been used to deceive the public:

— Changing the test’s name: Many states, like Massachusetts, have renamed their Common Core-based tests in order to make parents and legislators in the state think that they are getting something

- See more at: http://newbostonpost.com/2016/01/08/deliberately-deceiving-the-public-on-common-core/#sthash.j6hrUaBV.dpuf

The “Dear Colleague” Letters and John King’s Homework | deutsch29

The “Dear Colleague” Letters and John King’s Homework | deutsch29:

The “Dear Colleague” Letters and John King’s Homework

No Child Left Behind (NCLB) and the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) both include sections regarding civil rights, which originate with the Title IX Amendments of 1972. NCLB includes civil rights in its Title IX:

IN GENERAL.—Nothing in this Act shall be construed to
permit discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex (except as otherwise permitted under title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972), national origin, or disability in any program funded under this Act.

Exceptions in the Title IX document from 1972 include but are not limited to institutions controlled by religious organizations “with contrary religious tenets” and organizations that traditionally admit only a single sex.

In ESSA, the title that incorporates civil rights and that refers back to Title IX amendments from 1972 is now labeled Title VIII. Still, the civil rights component is in ESSA just as it was in NCLB. And there is not much to that civil rights component (which might be broadly referred to as Title IX, even though Title IX has many more sections than just the one on civil rights).

The importance of the above information is that it provides background for a six-page letter dated January 07, 2016, from Senator James Lankford, who chairs the Subcommittee on Regulatory Affairs and Federal Management (part of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs), to Acting US Secretary of Education John King. Lankford’s letter concerns the USDOE’s Office of Civil Rights (OCR) and its issuance of what it calls “Dear Colleague letters,” or letters sent The “Dear Colleague” Letters and John King’s Homework | deutsch29:

CURMUDGUCATION: Rules for Tools

CURMUDGUCATION: Rules for Tools:

Rules for Tools

Tom Vander Ark is as prolific as hell, so I have to admire his tenacity and energy, but every time I read his stuff, I'm driven to conclude that he's kind of a tool.

I don't intend to make a personal judgment-- for all I know, he's a delightful gentleman. But he often seems to achieve the near-perfect expression of the corporate tool approach to the education biz. This is unsurprising-- Vander Ark has been the executive director of education for the Gates Foundation, an education venture capitalist, and the head of a retail chain start-up. 

If you want a taste of Vander Ark's corporate tool approach to education, you can check out his latest thoughts at Buffington Post-- "21 Things Education Leaders Should Do Right Now"

Well, actually, twenty-one things ed leaders should do in the next 180 days or so. Vander Ark has broken the Things into three groups of seven. 

First Ninety Days

1. Make good first impressions. Visit every school.

2. Check out your leadership team. Get rid of anybody necessary in order to build a "high trust, high capacity team."

3. Hone your personal narrative. (Seriously-- this is how Vander Ark writes). "You'll have a hundred opportunities to share your story during your first ninety days," particularly if you don't waste time listening to people.

4. Open your political capital bank account and make initial deposits. He's talking about making CURMUDGUCATION: Rules for Tools: