School Districts Should Encourage Citizen Involvement in Education Policy Making - Kansas City infoZine News

School Districts Should Encourage Citizen Involvement in Education Policy Making - Kansas City infoZine News:

"MU professor finds correlation between increased voter turnout and higher test scores"

Columbia, MO - infoZine - President Obama’s “Race to the Top” grant program, which encourages school districts to compete for $4.35 billion, has made a strong push for education reform. While much of the education reform debate has focused on issues of adequate funding and teacher qualifications, few have addressed the role of citizen involvement in local education policy making. A University of Missouri researcher has examined the link between school board elections and local school performance. He has found a correlation between increased voter turnout for school board elections and state assessment scores.

“Education researchers know that parental involvement makes a difference, but few political scientists have asked: does voting make a difference?” said David Webber, associate professor of political science in the MU College of Arts and Science. “Because voter turnout and candidate competition in school district elections reflect a district’s social capital, these characteristics of school board elections should affect how schools perform and be valued as a means for improving school performance. While the local, nonprofessional atmosphere of school board elections could potentially attract high levels of citizen involvement, few candidates and equally few voters tend to get involved in school board elections. To encourage citizen involvement, school districts should host forums to discuss important issues and send newsletters to keep citizens informed of school progress.”

Sacramento Press / The survey of the community and employees regarding SCUSD's budget and strategic plan is complete.

Sacramento Press / The survey of the community and employees regarding SCUSD's budget and strategic plan is complete.

 These surveys mark the beginning of a new commitment by SCUSD to listening to our community, consulting the community on important decisions and providing the public open access to our work in leading the district. We thank everyone for their enthusiastic participation in these historic surveys. The data will be accumulate

Teacher Magazine: News and Information for Teacher Leaders

Teacher Magazine: News and Information for Teacher Leaders

Teacher Blogs

TOP

Blogboard Easy Recipe to Becoming a Teacher Prompted by a blogger looking to become a teacher because "teaching looks interesting," Mei Flower provides some handy tips on preparing to become a teacher. Think: Myth of Sisyphus. And more.

A Place at the Table Snowmageddon Susan Graham wonders whether the concerns about snow days suggest that there's something wrong with our educational priorities.

Teacher in a Strange Land Fluff and Nonsense Nancy Flanagan asks, "Why do some people adamantly insist that project-based learning is fluff?"

Living in Dialogue Duncan: "Don't Teach to the Test!" Secretary Duncan says we must "give every child a chance to discover their genius." What are the implications?

Road Diaries: Teacher of the Year Teacher Tales Anthony Mullen, who was asked to write the foreword to Chicken Soup for the Soul: Teacher Tales, debuts the foreword for his Teacher readers.

Unwrapping the Gifted What Brain Imaging Shows Us About Gifted Learners  Tamara Fisher scans available information regarding MRI's and what they indicate about developmental differences in the brains of gifted youth.

The Book Whisperer Effective Literacy Programs Lose Funding Donalyn Miller urges educators to show support for five literacy programs which will lose direct funding under the FY2011 proposed federal budget.

Teacher Magazine: These Things We Believe

Teacher Magazine: These Things We Believe

I’ve been working with teachers as a journalist, writer, and online-community moderator for more than 25 years. And I can’t remember a time when so many outstanding teachers were so discouraged about the conditions under which they’re working and the daily criticism they’re hearing from political leaders, school reform groups, and media pundits who’ve identified teachers as the chief cause of public education’s problems.

Good teachers are frustrated, I believe, because they care so much about the work they do. They feel strait-jacketed by conflicting directives from above, and overwhelmed by constant budget cutting that makes a hard job even harder. More and more, there’s a temptation to respond to the constant criticism with angry rebuttals that point out society’s mixed messages: “Teach to the test.” “Individualize instruction.” “Stick to the teaching script.” “Transform students into critical thinkers.” Then, when teacher tempers boil over, we hear: “How come they’re always whining?”

This point was underscored recently in some interesting dialogue that took place in the Teacher Leaders Network daily discussion group. Bob Williams, a high school math teacher and Alaska’s 2009 state teacher of the year, noted all the time and energy he’s invested lately in “adamantly opposing” the criticism he found to be poorly researched or ill-informed. (See this recent essay, for example.)

“It feels unhealthy for me to become defined only in terms

The Education Report: A Twitter plug

The Education Report

A Twitter plug

By Katy Murphy
Wednesday, February 10th, 2010 at 10:33 pm in environment
No Comments

If you’re an avid consumer of education news, I should level with you: I post updates and story links about schools on Twitter, and some of it doesn’t make it into the blog or in the paper.

http://twitter.com/katymurphy

Even if you don’t want to sign up, or you’re not quite ready to “follow” me (understandably), you can still see those updates by going to the above Web page. Like the one I just posted about the solar panels to be installed at 17 Oakland schools. Of course, there wasn’t space to list the schools on Twitter, so I’ll do it here: Read the rest of this entry »

Oakland principals speak out about gang violence, ask for help

By Katy Murphy
Wednesday, February 10th, 2010 at 2:07 pm in elementary schools, safety,students
1 Comment

Two East Oakland elementary school principals have appealed to the police and the community for help, saying increased gang activity and violence is threatening to erode the progress they have made during the last several years.

In a letter sent this afternoon to Oakland school district’s police chief and dozens of others from the school district, city and county (and local newspaper), ACORN Woodland Principal Kimi Kean and EnCompass Academy Principal Tram Nguyen detailed their concerns — which include daytime shootings and weekend drug sales in the school parking lot — and proposed solutions.

They write: Read the rest of this entry »

Tilden update: Can one shuttered school save another from closing?

By Katy Murphy
Tuesday, February 9th, 2010 at 2:00 pm in buildings, elementary schools, families,preschool, special education, students
No Comments

Tribune file photo by Sean Donnelly

For well over a year, parents from Oakland’s Tilden School have cajoled, grilled and held district administrators to task about the future of the unique program, which serves children — many of them, with special needs — in preschool through third grade.

Tilden will close in June. Still, those behind the dogged effort to keep elements of the program alive have scored a substantial victory: a new preschool and special needs diagnostic center at the nearby Burbank campus. Most of Tilden’s students are in preschool. Read the rest of this entry »

Education Research Report: Charter Schools Show Increased Rates of High School Graduation and College Enrollment, According to New Study

Education Research Report: Charter Schools Show Increased Rates of High School Graduation and College Enrollment, According to New Study

Charter Schools Show Increased Rates of High School Graduation and College Enrollment, According to New Study

“The Unknown World of Charter High Schools"

In the first-ever analysis of the impacts of charter school attendance on educational attainment, educational researchers find that attending charter high schools is associated with higher graduation rates and college attendance. The findings show that students attending charter high schools in Florida and Chicago have an increased likelihood of successful high-school completion and college enrollment when compared with their traditional public high school counterparts.

In Chicago, students who attended a charter high school were 7 percentage points more likely to earn a regular high school diploma than their counterparts with similar characteristics who attended a traditional public high school. The graduation differential for Florida charter schools was even larger, at 15 percentage points.

The findings for college attendance are remarkably similar in Florida and Chicago. Among the study population of charter 8th graders, students who attended a charter high school in 9th grade are 8 to 10 percentage points more likely to attend college than similar students who attended a traditional public high school.

The results, point out the researchers, are comparable to those of some studies which find that attending a Catholic high school boosts the likelihood of high school graduation and college attendance by 10 to 18 percentage points.

In exploring the various factors that might play a role in the charter schools’ positive effect on educational attainment, the research team focused in on the fact that grade configurations in charter schools often differ from those of traditional public schools. In the traditional public school sector in both Florida and Chicago, high schools are almost always separate from middle schools, which is not the case for charter schools. In 2001-02, about 30 percent of Florida charter 8th-grade students attended schools that also offered at least some high-school grades. In Chicago, nearly half of the 8th-grade charter students could attend at least some high-school grades without changing schools. The researchers point out that this 

Battle Of The Minds: Why Don't Kids Like School? - THE DAILY RIFF - Be Smarter. About Education.

Battle Of The Minds: Why Don't Kids Like School? - THE DAILY RIFF - Be Smarter. About Education.

Why Don't Students Like School?   More importantly, why doesn't Daniel Willingham like 21^stcentury learning, and why must he fight those who seek to make education more meaningful, more productive, and more authentically engaging for our students? 

Much attention is being directed to Virginia Professor Daniel Willingham's Why Don't Students Like School?,  most of it to his claim that there is no quality evidence supporting the theory and widespread practice of teaching to students different learning styles or "modalities."  But Willingham's book deserves broader consideration: again and again this well intentioned cognitive scientist makes claims that seem intentionally provocative but poorly established, designed more to undermine reform than to advance student learning.   Upon close reading, his arguments against teaching for imagination, against connecting learning to "relevancy," and against teaching students to think as scientists utterly fail to convince.

Willingham's Chapter 2 (Factual knowledge must precede skill) makes a sustained argument that Einstein was wrong when he said "imagination is more important than knowledge."  Students, he explains, need facts to think well, to have something to think about, to better inform their thinking, and to better learn new facts in the future.  I agree with all of these points.  

But, surely students will learn more content knowledge when they are acting upon the knowledge, and when then they are approaching that knowledge with an inquiry analysis, and when they seek to use the knowledge they are learning in practical, applied ways.  In doing so, they learn the knowledge better, and are better informed to learn new and additional knowledge, which itself will be best be learned by inquiry and application.

Willingham tacks back and forth in this chapter, often contradicting himself, and at times we agree exactly, as here: "the cognitive processes that are most esteemed- logical thinking, problem solving, 

voiceofsandiego.org | News. Investigation. Analysis. Conversation. Intelligence.

voiceofsandiego.org | News. Investigation. Analysis. Conversation. Intelligence.

Bright and Early: The Education Newsblitz

One thing to say today: If you learned it, then you should have got an A on it. Thanks to Alexander Russo for the link! Now for the newsblitz:

• We blog about the first bids for construction work under the controversial labor agreement on renovating San Diego Unified schools, which came in significantly higher than estimated. Critics say it proves the labor pact will inflate costs; the school district says it's too early to tell.
• Oceanside schools are scraping for more ways to cut money, which means they may have to turn to employee groups to get concessions, the Union-Tribune reports.
• Also in the UT: A Lemon Grove middle school is temporarily closing to save its district money.

Tenure not quite automatic in L.A. The Educated Guess

The Educated Guess:

Tenure not quite automatic in L.A.

Posted in Teacher Development

Embarrassed by a Los Angeles Times story revealing teacher tenure has been all but automatic in Los Angeles Unified, the district is tripling the number of probationary teachers who will be fired this year.
The extra scrutiny will help weed out bad teachers before they gain due process rights that make it very difficult to fire teachers for poor performance. But L.A. Unified’s ability to identify effective teachers is still hampered, as in many districts, by a poor evaluation process and a problematic, two-year probationary period. The district is in the process of changing the former, but only the Legislature or voters can fix the latter.
(Read more and comment on this post)

John's Q&As State Superintendent Jack O’Connell looks back – and ahead

Recent Videos State Superinten... Derek Mitchell, ... Stephanie Couch ... Foothill College... More videos

SCUSD Observer: Budget forums begin next week...

SCUSD Observer: Budget forums begin next week...:

"The district has scheduled four community forums to discuss SCUSD budget cuts. Each is scheduled from 6:30p.m. to 8:30 p.m.

• Feb. 17 – McClatchy High School, 3066 Freeport Blvd.

• Feb. 23 – Rosemont High School, 9594 Kiefer Blvd.

• Feb. 24 – Luther Burbank High School, 3500 Florin Road

• March 3 – location to be announced

Complete results of both of the district's online surveys will be released next week."

Eduflack: Backbenching the Prez' Ed Budget

Eduflack: Backbenching the Prez' Ed Budget

It has been a little over a week since President Obama officially submitted his FY2011 budget.  Depending on who you speak to, it was the best of times/worst of times for the education sector.  Overall, the Administration is seeking to raise the federal commitment to education spending by more than 7 percent.  But that increase comes with a new set of priorities, a new grouping of funding streams, and some eliminations of long time, cherished programs.  You can see Eduflack's original thoughts on the budget here.

During the original scrum, we heard from many of the groups we expected to hear from — including oldies but goodies like the NEA and AFT and the growing number of education "reform" organizations seem by many to benefit the new "consolidation."  But Eduflack thought it would be interesting to see what some other organizations have been saying about the budget reccs, particularly those who are focused on the issues IDed in my original analysis.  Unsurprisingly, most comments come from those unwilling to throw a big bear hug around the proposed budget.

On the issue of teacher quality and preparation, we have Dr. Sharon Robinson, president and CEO of the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education (ISTE) opposing the elimination of programs such as the Teacher Quality Partnership saying: 

Across the nation, colleges and universities are playing an indispensable role in supplying our schools, particularly hard-to-staff schools, with effective teachers who intend to serve as classroom leaders for 

Internet rewiring youngsters' brains - Telegraph

Internet rewiring youngsters' brains - Telegraph:

"Experts believe the internet encourages users to dart from page to page, rather than concentrating on one source such as a book.
Described as 'associative' thinking, researchers believe it is reducing youngsters' capacity to read and write at length because their minds are being remoulded to function differently."

A survey designed to examine the internet's impact on the brain examined how 100 12 to 18-year-olds responded to a series of questions requiring some form of research.

They discovered that most of the respondents gave their answers after looking at just half the number of web pages older people examined.

They also found that younger people took far less time to research their answers and were therefore less thorough.

Professor David Nicholas of the University College London, who conducted the research, said it supported the growing theory that the web's hyperlinked network of information was helping to rewire youngsters' minds.

He revealed that 40 per cent of those taking part in the study viewed no more than three pages from the thousands available online, when researching a topic.

In contrast, people who grew up before the age of the internet repeatedly returned to the same source instead of flitting between 

Letters - ‘No Child Left Behind,’ Revisited - NYTimes.com

Letters - ‘No Child Left Behind,’ Revisited - NYTimes.com

“Making ‘No Child’ Better” (editorial, Feb. 5) misses the point that the No Child Left Behind law is founded on faulty assumptions of top-down mandates, zero tolerance, narrow forms of assessment, and privatization. These are all popular nowadays, but have been shown to be ineffective in other sectors (health, corrections, welfare and so on) and have a dismal track record so far in education.
“Tightening up” the law will only prolong the agony.
President Obama’s appointment of Arne Duncan as education secretary instead of the education scholar Linda Darling-Hammond has set authentic reform in education back by at least a decade. Educators aren’t the villains;

Education - Everything you need to know about the world of education.

Education- Everything you need to know about the world of education.

Colleges still accepting applications for fall

A friend told me that her son had applied to half a dozen colleges and universities for this coming fall. She has become worried that he won’t get into any of them and should have applied to more. What can he do?

The same query was posed on a listserv by an educational consultant, who noted that the University of California may, for the first time, wait list students for the fall as officials figure out how many their financial straits will allow them to accept.

It turns out that there are scores of fine schools still accepting applications. In some cases, you have only days to finish the application, and in others, a lot longer. (See partial list below.)

Continue reading this post »

Doubt about learning styles

[This is my column for the Local Living section of Feb. 11, 2010.]

If you are in a mischievous mood and want to get a rise out of your favorite teachers or principals, send them a copy of "Learning Styles: Concepts and Evidence," in Psychological Science in the Public Interest, Volume 9, No. 3, December 2008. (Actually, it came out in December 2009, but for a reason understood only by academics in the timeless search for truth, its official publication date was 12 months previous.)

Here is my summary of the 15-page paper: Learning styles are hogwash.

It’s not quite that bad. The four authors agree that "people differ in the degree to which they have some fairly specific aptitudes for different kinds of thinking and for processing different types of information." Some of us consider ourselves visual learners. Some of us think we learn best if we use our hands: draw, make models, stack coins. The authors conclude, however, that "at present, there is no adequate evidence base to justify incorporating learning-styles assessments into general educational practice."

Continue reading this post »

Fight to keep D.C. schools open fails

The last flickers of public school resistance against the weather in the Washington region faded at 4:32 Wednesday afternoon, when DCPS announced it was calling off Thursday classes.

So ends a snowbound four-day saga that began with Mayor Adrian M. Fenty and Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee planning to open up on a two-hour delay on Monday but ended with closures that have lasted all week. (Read my previous posts on this drama here, here and here.)

But for Rhee, the surrender is not quite unconditional. She says she still hasn't decided about Friday's scheduled day of professional development for teachers. Stay tuned.

Follow D.C. Schools Insider every day athttp://washingtonpost.com/dcschoolsinsider.

And for admissions advice, college news and links to campus papers, please check out our new Higher Education page atwashingtonpost.com/higher-ed Bookmark it!

More Detroit schools to close | freep.com | Detroit Free Press

More Detroit schools to close | freep.com | Detroit Free Press:

"Roughly 40 Detroit public schools will close, and the district will impose layoffs, furloughs and other concessions upon its staff this year to help close a $200-million deficit, emergency financial manager Robert Bobb said Wednesday.

Bobb said the closures will include underutilized high schools. Neither Bobb nor district officials would say which schools will close.

And the plan isn't a total surprise. School officials talked last year of possibly closing 60 schools over two years.

Bobb's comments came during the Crain's Newsmakers of the Year luncheon at the Detroit Marriott at the Renaissance Center, where he and Detroit Mayor Dave Bing were lauded as 'change agents in charge.'

Bobb said his last 11 months as the Detroit Public Schools' emergency financial manager have been filled with ups and downs, with the positives being getting to work with DPS students and negatives including being sued by the school board. But, he added, he sees hope."

Virginia governor wants more charter schools in state - washingtonpost.com

Virginia governor wants more charter schools in state - washingtonpost.com

RICHMOND -- Gov. Robert F. McDonnell (R) unveiled an ambitious proposal Wednesday to expand the number of charter schools in Virginia as a way to offer a publicly funded, privately run education alternative.

McDonnell also said he wants to create virtual schools in which students can learn outside traditional classrooms and laboratory schools that would benefit from partnerships with Virginia colleges and universities.
All three proposals must be approved by the General Assembly during its 60-day session, which ends next month.
The recently inaugurated governor has declared charter schools a top priority in his first legislative session. He has long praised President Obama for his support of charters, and he recently hired a nationally known charter advocate as his education secretary.

Plan strips school councils of power to pick principals :: CHICAGO SUN-TIMES :: Education

Plan strips school councils of power to pick principals :: CHICAGO SUN-TIMES :: Education:

"Hundreds of parent-led local school councils would be stripped of the critical power to pick principals under a bill introduced this week by the Rev. James Meeks, head of the Senate Education Committee.


Plus, up to 42,000 students at 65 of the city's lowest-scoring public schools would be entitled to tuition vouchers to attend private or parochial schools under an amendment Meeks said he is planning to another bill."



"I think they are radical changes,'' the Chicago Democrat said Wednesday of the two bills now in Senate committees. "Isn't that what the president ran on -- change? America has voted for change.''
Some school activists were stunned by Meeks' proposal to convert elected local school councils into advisory bodies. No longer would LSCs select and fire principals and approve school budgets, as required under the 1988 Chicago School Reform Law.
"Why would he want to get rid of the last segment of democracy that exists in our schools, where people who are most directly affected can have a voice in how their schools are run?'' asked Jitu Brown of the Kenwood Oakland Community Organization.
Meeks -- pastor of Chicago megachurch Salem Baptist -- said Chicago Schools CEO Ron Huberman and his predecessor, now U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan, have told him that "principals are the most important people'' in a school while complaining that "we don't pick the principals.'' The bill would "eliminate that excuse,'' Meeks said.

Removal Of Asperger's To Change Special Ed Access : NPR

Removal Of Asperger's To Change Special Ed Access : NPR:

"The American Psychiatric Association announced yesterday that it is proposing to eliminate the diagnosis of Asperger's syndrome from the official diagnostic guide of mental disorders. The revised manual would place kids who are currently said to have Asperger's within an expanded definition of autism.

That change might affect how families get special education services in public schools. Currently, parents of children with autism turn to the federal law that guarantees a free public education for students with disabilities. Kids with autism clearly qualify, but for kids with Asperger's, it's much less clear. They are are often highly intellligent, but have social problems that make it hard for them to thrive in school.

Melinda Bird, senior counsel with the advocacy group Disability Rights California, says the current guidelines used by psychiatrists present parents with confusing criteria for the disorder. As a result, Bird says, 'parents spend unnecessary time arguing whether a child meets every one of these nuanced criteria.'"

State commissioner vows 'never again' for test snafu that kept homeless student from graduating

State commissioner vows 'never again' for test snafu that kept homeless student from graduating:

"The state education commissioner Wednesday promised that no student will ever again have to choose between graduating from high school and being homeless.

Commissioner David Steiner - lambasted on Keith Olbermann's show Tuesday night as the 'worst person in the world' - said all state family homeless shelters will get a schedule of state exams to avoid the situation that prevented a Brooklyn high school student from earning a diploma.

Rosa Bracero, 17, was prevented from taking a Regents exam she needed to graduate because she had to sit in a homeless shelter intake center all day after her family was evicted.

She took the test a few days later, but the state refused to score it, citing fears of cheating.

Steiner is meeting with Rosa and her mom Friday in Manhattan to express his regrets about what happened."