Wednesday, February 17, 2010

Happy Birthday Stimulus! Now, What's Next? - Politics K-12 - Education Week

Happy Birthday Stimulus! Now, What's Next?

By Michele McNeil on February 17, 2010 11:43 AM | No Comments | No TrackBacks

Today is the one-year anniversary of the economic stimulus package, which infused an unprecedented $100 billion in new federal aid into education. To me, the biggest effect so far has been how it saved states from making scary-deep, Draconian cuts to K-12 budgets. It remains to be seen how much impact the stimulus will have on Race to the Top-style reforms.

Rather than looking back, or celebrating the birthday, as countless others are doing in statement after statement, I want to look ahead and examine the biggest question marks out there as we go into the stimulus package's second and final year. Here's what makes my list:

Who will win Race to the Top?
How gutsy will the Department be in holding winning states accountablefor their Race to the Top promises, especially as states face increasing budget pressure and become desperate for more money to plug budget holes?
When you're talking about $100 billion in education aid, including some high-profile competitions (e.g. Race to the Top), there's bound to be a scandal. What will it be? And how good will the Department of Education, which has been fairly deft at managing communications crises, handle said scandal?
As Secretary Duncan, via the stimulus package, tries to force states and school districts to embrace merit pay--and knowing that changing how we evaluate teachers is very difficult work--will

Cortines' Scholastic entanglement - latimes.com

Cortines' Scholastic entanglement - latimes.com:

"L.A. Unified's superintendent needs to give up his paid position with Scholastic Inc."

The chief of the Los Angeles Unified School District should not be in the employ of a major outside vendor for his schools. It's that simple. Supt. Ramon C. Cortines must relinquish his position with Scholastic Inc., and the school board should apply any pressure needed to make that happen.

Cortines has served for 15 years on the board of the publishing company, according to a recent report by Times staff writer Howard Blume. Since coming to work for the district in 2008, Cortines has earned more than $150,000 a year for serving on the board, while Scholastic has made $5.2 million in contracts with the district as its main supplier of reading intervention curricula.

No one should need a primer on why this is a disturbing situation. The reaction of school board President Monica Garcia -- "I don't know what is interesting here" -- is dismaying. Here's one thing we find interesting: The head of L.A. Unified -- a district with abysmal reading scores -- cannot involve himself in key decisions about reading intervention contracts for which Scholastic is competing.

Nor does it remove the conflict for Cortines to distance himself from the process. The people who make the contract decisions obviously want to please their superintendent. Cortines might not care whether they pick Scholastic, but how is the staff to be sure? It may seem to those making the decision that the safest bet is to pick the company with which their boss is entangled.

That's not to impugn Cortines' integrity or the quality of Scholastic's products. (How could we not like the publisher that brought "Harry Potter" to America?) But the superintendent certainly should have made his connection with Scholastic clear in a very public way before accepting the job. Former board President Marlene Canter told Blume the board never examined Cortines' outside employment when it appointed him

L.A. schools chief Cortines calls for unity amid crisis and a culture of no excuses | L.A. NOW | Los Angeles Times

L.A. schools chief Cortines calls for unity amid crisis and a culture of no excuses | L.A. NOW | Los Angeles Times:

"Los Angeles Unified School District Supt. Ramon C. Cortines on Tuesday accentuated the positive amid dire financial realities in his first “state of the district” address before students, parents, school officials and dignitaries at Belmont High.

He chose the Belmont campus, west of downtown, because of the school’s steep rise in academic performance, but also spoke of the need to do better still, saying that only 52% of district students graduate in four years.

Cortines cited a looming $640-million budget deficit as a prime reason that warring district factions must work together.

“Too many times we focus on blaming each for not achieving our goals,” he said. “We point fingers at our students…administrators and our parents. And that has got to stop.”

Even in difficult financial times reforms will continue, he said, citing such efforts as the hard-fought competition between groups inside and outside the district to control 30 campuses. The bidding frequently has pitted teachers from traditional schools (which operate under union contracts) against independently operated -- and mostly nonunion -- charter schools."

Plugged-in generation multi-tasking big time - baltimoresun.com

Plugged-in generation multi-tasking big time - baltimoresun.com:

"Sixteen-year-old Arnold James has a hard time picturing life without his cell phone.

'It would probably be like drug addicts feel when they're getting off of drugs,' says the Wilde Lake High School student, who often uses his phone during school hours. 'Sometimes your cell phone is a relief from the busy-ness at school and all the assignments.'

American youngsters such as James are now using cell phones, iPods and other electronic devices for an average of 7 1/2 hours daily - more than the equivalent of a full day of school, according to a recent national study tracking entertainment media habits.

The Kaiser Family Foundation study found that children spend so much time multi-tasking - texting, sending and reading e-mail, watching videos and playing video games - that they actually pack nearly 11 hours of activity into 7 1/2 hours.

The Kaiser findings speak volumes about how accessible and widespread electronic gadgets are among young people, and how, often in the absence of strict parental supervision, they're redefining modes"

Citing conscience, Wake schools chief resigns - Local - NewsObserver.com

Citing conscience, Wake schools chief resigns - Local - NewsObserver.com:

"RALEIGH -- In already turbulent times for Wake County schools, Superintendent Del Burns abruptly resigned Tuesday, declaring that he could no longer 'in good conscience' work for the system he has served for decades.

That means the new Wake County school board majority, which has pledged to revamp the district and undo several of Burns' initiatives, faces another major hurdle: finding a new chief of day-to-day operations.

At the start of a school board meeting, Burns, 56, revealed his decision to resign. He had not given members prior notice.

Board member Anne McLaurin said she could understand why Burns would leave, considering"

This Week In Education: Media: More Reporters Join Twitter

Media: More Reporters Join Twitter

Looking for education reporters to follow (or bother) on Twitter? Here are a few recent entrants -- maybe you know others:

@BeachEdReporter: Lauren Roth Virginia Beach Education Reporter The Virginian-Pilot

@cathgrimes: Cathy Grimes Education team leader The Daily Press, Newport News, Va.

@dorieturner: Dorie Turner The Associated Press Atlanta Georgia

@davidmckay41: David McKay Wilson Freelance

@reporterdmurray: Dave Murray Grand Rapids Press

@JasonWermers: Jason Wermers The Item Sumter, SC

@WatchdogDiva: McNelly Torres Independent Investigative Journalist

@SarahCarrtp: Sarah Carp Times Picayune

There's also that massive but now outdated list of 100+ ed reporters on Twitter from last summer, which you can find here.

The Quick and the Ed

The Quick and the Ed
February 17, 2010

Student Loan Debt Collector Irony

The Sallie Mae agent trying to collect on defaulted loans held by college borrowers doesn’t need a college degree. See here and here. It’s worth keeping in mind when considering the jobs saved by preventing student loan reform versus the ones that could be obtained by the roughly one million additional students receiving an expanded Pell Grant.

Local Control?

In explaining why San Diego opted out of the state’s bid for $700 million in federal Race to the Top money, Richard Barrera, the school board president, said this:

“It’s a bad idea for folks in Sacramento to make education decisions in San Diego.”

In Fiscal Year 2007, the most recent data available from the National Center for Education Statistics, San Diego Unified School District received 47 percent of its revenues from the state government (Sacramento) compared to 44 percent coming from local (San Diego) taxes.

Posted by Chad Aldeman at 10:31 am | Tags: Local Control, San Diego, School Funding | No Comments

voiceofsandiego.org | News. Investigation. Analysis. Conversation. Intelligence. - A Backlash Against Classrooms with High Technology -- But No Air Conditioning

voiceofsandiego.org | A Backlash Against Classrooms with High Technology -- But No Air Conditioning

The sleek new digital whiteboards in math classrooms at Patrick Henry High can pull up websites for classes to view and save interactive lessons teachers create in advance. Jeff Bellinger calls his "a wonderful piece of equipment." But he rarely uses it to do much more than draw perfect circles or graphs for students in his math class -- things he could do on a regular dry-erase board, albeit a bit slower.

"It just seems like a bit of overkill," he said.

Bellinger teaches in a temporary classroom with no air conditioning. The influx of new technology over the next four years into classrooms like his is a rare boon for San Diego Unified schools in a budget crisis. But the tools have also inspired a backlash from some teachers and parents who don't see the point in computerizing classrooms while more mundane fixes have to wait, such as repairing roofs, replacing fire alarms or upgrading buildings for earthquake safety or disabled access.

Though the technology is being installed while schools scrape for copying paper and teachers

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

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

Virginia governor pushes deep budget cuts

Virginia Gov. Robert F. McDonnell (R) has privately recommended cutting $730 million from K-12 education.

MORE ON EDUCATION

Gov. Robert F. McDonnell (AP)

Why not link teacher pay to test scores?

My guest is Lisa Guisbond, a policy analyst for the National Center for Fair and Open Testing, known as FairTest, a Boston-based organization that aims to to improve standardized testing practices and evaluations of students, teachers and schools.

By Lisa Guisbond
Have your kids ever gotten an A for work that you, or they, didn’t think was worthwhile? Something like that happened recently with Education Secretary Arne Duncan.

Education historian and New York University Professor Diane Ravitchgave him an A for effectiveness at getting buy-in for linking teacher evaluations to student test scores and a D- for pushing bad ideas. I would forgo the A and lower the grade to an F for pushing ideas that are destructive.

Continue reading this post »

Philadelphia Public School Notebook

Notes from the news, Feb. 17

Submitted by Erika Owens on Wed, 02/17/2010 - 09:32 Posted in Notes from the news | Permalink

Poll: Early-childhood education has wide support in Pa. Daily News
81 percent of Pennsylvanian's support early childhood education and 71 percent would pay for it with state funds.

A Quick Fix for America's Worst Schools TIME
A look at Mastery Schools turnaround efforts in Philly.

News flash: Students have brains The Notebook blog
A guest blog from Shania Morris, an 8th grader and PSU member.

Not another snow day The Notebook blog
Tacking missed days onto the end of the school year doesn't help with PSSA preparation now.

See also: Students and parents make snowy trek back to schoolThe Inquirer

The Educated Guess � Unions plans protests March 4

The Educated Guess Unions plans protests March 4:

"A protest or demonstration will be coming to a school or college campus near you on Thursday, March 4th.

That’s what the state’s two teachers unions, the California Teachers Assn. and the California Federation of Teachers, are designating their “Day of Action,” in which teachers hope to rouse people’s attention to the impact of current and likely budget cuts. CTA announced it will be running a 1-minute radio ad promoting the day on 84 stations between now and then.

The statewide protest will occur at the same time that school boards are voting on preliminary layoff notices, so there will be plenty of angry teachers and parents. Districts must notify teachers by March 15 if jobs may be eliminated, and, indications are tens of thousands of teachers will be notified. Last year, many got back their jobs when Washington filled in cuts with stimulus dollars. But that won’t likely happen this year. And if their jobs are spared, it may be because unions have agreed to slice five days off the school year; Los Angeles Unified Superintendent Ray Cortines is the latest to propose this. .

It’s been hard for school board and teachers to convey to the public the impact of raising kindergarten classes from 20 to 30 students, or eliminating art and music or"

This Week In Education: Photo: Remembering The Little Rock Nine

City ed officials recommend renewal for Opportunity Charter School | GothamSchools

Most charter schools pass through the renewal process with ease, but for Opportunity Charter School, news that the city wants to give it a new lease on life is not something it took for granted.

Department of Education officials are recommending that the state renew Opportunity’s charter for three years, a time period it says will allow the school to produce several years of graduation data before its success comes in for more questioning. OCS had a rocky start and has since had a difficult time proving to the city and state that its students, especially its highest achieving ones, are making enough progress to earn renewal.

The school’s student body is roughly half general education students and half students with learning disabilities and it serves students with some of the lowest test scores in the city. Last year, I profiled theschool’s struggle to get off of probation.

Private school test prep company is marketing $500 workbook for public school gifted and talented program entry - NYPOST.com

Test prep for the nanny set is heading to public schools.

A Manhattan firm that made waves with its pricey private-school entry-test prepping is moving its model to the city's public-school gifted and talented programs, The Post has learned.

Aristotle Circle is poised to usher in the first $500 workbook for parents bent on seeing their kids score above the 90th percentile on the city's two accelerated-program entrance exams, known as OLSAT and BRSA.

Founders of the program -- which is five to 10 times costlier than its competitors -- say it's not only worth the outlay, but that there's a market for it.

"A matter of points can make or break whether or not their [kids] are admitted," said Aristotle Circle CEO Suzanne Rheault, 40. "If [parents] can get a good to great public school for free then tutoring and test prep is well worth the money."

LAUSD's Dance of the Lemons - Page 1 - News - Los Angeles - LA Weekly

Editor's note: After this article went to press, LAUSD Superintendent Ramon Cortines announced that the district plans to substantially cut back on granting lifelong tenure to inexperienced teachers.

Several years ago, a 74-year-old Dominguez Elementary School fourth-grade teacher was having trouble controlling her students as her abilities deteriorated amid signs of "burnout." Shirley Loftis was told by Los Angeles Unified School District administrators to retire or be fired, and she did retire, but hardly under the school district's terms.

The principal at Dominguez, Irene Hinojosa, recalls how she spent three years documenting Loftis' poor teaching skills and inability to control 10-year-olds. "From the minute I observed her, she basically didn't seem to have the knowledge of the standards and how to deliver them," Hinojosa tells L.A. Weekly. "I had her do lessons on the same standard over and over again, and children did not get it. On simple math concepts [such as determining perimeters and area] — over and over, she didn't know how to deliver."

Each September, a new crop of children quickly caught on to the fact that Loftis had lost control. Full-on classroom fights flared up. One child beat another with a backpack, and others threw objects — even a chair, Hinojosa says. Teachers at Dominguez Elementary began reporting incidents to Hinojosa, who moved Loftis' class from a bungalow to a room across from her office. That way, the principal reasoned, she could intervene in the chaos a bit faster.

When parents in the Carson neighborhoods around Dominguez Park got wind of the

Fourteen city schools land on state review list | GothamSchools

Fourteen New York City schools landed on the state’s list of “schools under registration review,” the state education department announced today.

That’s down four from last year, after three city schools were added to the list this year but seven schools were removed. Schools are placed on the SURR list if their English and math scores on state exams are farthest from a state-set standard, prompting the threat of closure if the schools do not improve.

The three schools added to the list this year are all high schools, Washington Irving High School, the School for Global Studies and the Grace H. Dodge Career and Technology High School. All seven of the city schools removed from the list are elementary and middle schools.

“The SURR process has served New York well, particularly in terms of improving English and math results in the lowest performing elementary and middle schools,” State Education Commissioner David Steiner said in a statement. “Now we must align SURR with the process we’ve created for identifying and helping the Persistently Lowest Achieving schools. Doing so will focus greater attention on those schools that have had unacceptably low graduation rates for many years.”

The state’s list of “persistently lowest achieving” schools, which it announced in January, singled out the bottom 5 percent of schools to target for replacement or closure. Nearly 60 schools statewide — primarily high schools with low graduation rates — landed on that list, including 34 New York City schools.

City Limits - City Limits Magazine: March 2010 | Hope or Hype In Harlem?

City Limits - City Limits Magazine: March 2010 | Hope or Hype In Harlem?:

"March 2010

Founded by a committed advocate for low-income children, nurtured by the politically powerful and Wall Street titans, and lauded by media around the world, the Harlem Children's Zone has raised a nation's hopes. The Obama administration wants to use it as the model for a nationwide antipoverty plan. But what is really known about the success of the Zone? Is there enough evidence to base a larger initiative around it? Are other cities capable of developing their own versions of the Harlem Miracle? In the new City Limits, read an in-depth evaluation of the program that's inspiring the federal government's most innovative poverty-fighting initiative in decades."

Study sheds light on 'teenage night owl syndrome' - latimes.com

Study sheds light on 'teenage night owl syndrome' - latimes.com:

"Students are going to sleep later and may be underperforming in class because they're not getting enough bright light in the morning, researchers say. Better school lighting may help."

Riding in school buses in the early morning, then sitting in poorly lighted classrooms are the main reasons students have trouble getting to sleep at night, according to new research.

Teenagers, like everyone else, need bright lights in the morning, particularly in the blue wavelengths, to synchronize their inner, circadian rhythms with nature's cycles of day and night.

If they are deprived of blue light during the morning, they go to sleep an average of six minutes later each night, until their bodies are completely out of sync with the school day, researchers from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute reported Tuesday in the journal Neuroendocrinology Letters.

The finding was made by fitting a group of students with goggles that blocked blue light and discovering that their circadian rhythms were significantly affected.

"These morning-light-deprived teenagers are going to bed later, getting less sleep and possibly underperforming on standardized tests," said lead author Mariana G. Figueiro, a sleep researcher at the institute's Lighting Research Center. "We are starting to call this the 'teenage night owl syndrome.' "

"This is a nice little preliminary study" that definitely needs to be replicated, said sleep researcher Mary A. Carskadon of Brown University, who was not involved in the research. "I think the big take-

Straight A's -- but still not ready for college - Inside Bay Area

A perfect grade-point average in high school is a coup, no doubt about it. It tells students they're at the top of the heap — at their respective schools.

But a straight-A transcript does not guarantee a student is ready for college-level work. About 20 percent of the freshmen who enter Cal State East Bay with a 4.0 GPA need at least some remediation in math, English or both, according to Greg Smith, associate vice president of enrollment for the university.

The rate is about 60 percent when you include all first-time freshmen in the California State University system. Most of the 25,000 Cal State students placed in remedial classes each year held at least a B average in high school and completed a long list of university-approved college preparatory courses, as the admissions system requires.

Mike Kirst, professor emeritus of education and business administration at Stanford University, says that statistic is evidence that grades, course titles and even "honors" labels are suspect. It's what's taught in the courses that counts, he said — and too often, that content is weak.

"In America, high school course content and homework demands and pacing is detached from college," Kirst said. "If you're not in AP (advanced placement) classes, it's really quite dangerous."

"It's not just Oakland at all," he added about college preparation in high school. "It's more common than uncommon."

Frank Worrell, an educational

psychology professor at UC Berkeley, said students with strong grades are more likely to succeed in college — but that

We need to plant a flag in the sand to protect public education | Clovis Independent

We need to plant a flag in the sand to protect public education

It’s time that someone plants a flag in the sand, and I guess it has to be us.

Public schools in California have been brutalized by a series of funding cuts since 2008 that are worse than anything since the Great Depression. In part, these cuts are completely understandable. The economy has been in a free fall, and it is only natural, then, that schools share in solving the budget problem. However, since 2008, public education has been disproportionally on the receiving end of the State’s budget problems, absorbing 59 percent of the reductions, though we account for about 43 percent of the budget.

This slash and burn approach to public education funding has resulted in schools across California gutting their programs for students. In many cases, students are being denied access to performing arts and athletics, having their instructional year shortened, losing out on the opportunity to attend school in buildings that are modern and well-maintained, and even losing high quality teachers due to lay-offs.

Well I say enough is enough. Our kids deserve better, and if it means we must plant a flag in the sand and fight to preserve their education, so be it. In Clovis Unified we aren’t going to make those kinds of sacrifices. We aren’t going to gut our programs and services to students, or give up on maintaining the world class facilities for which we are known, nor are we going to sacrifice the very people who have made our school district a wonderful place of learning.

Yes, our Governor’s proposed budget leaves us with a $28 million hole to fill before we can claim a balanced budget. And yes, this comes on top of th

Robert Reich, ex-labor secretary, sees better economic times ahead | mydesert.com | The Desert Sun

American families have endured nearly two years of stress and punishment under almost unprecedented financial turmoil, but the economy is beginning to turn around. Sort of.

“Things are getting worse more slowly,” former Clinton Administration Secretary of Labor Robert Reich told a packed audience Tuesday at Eisenhower Medical Center's Annenberg Center for Health Sciences, part of the 2010 Rancho Mirage Speakers Series.

The economy “will turn up. I promise you, it will turn up. … You can bank on that.”

Reich, a professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, served in three presidential administrations — including late president and Rancho Mirage resident Gerald Ford's. Reich also helped lead President Obama's economic transition amid a downturn that eventually became the nation's worst since the Great Depression.

In an interview prior to his speech, Reich said he supported the Obama Administration's nearly $800 billion economic stimulus package, which he said helped save an estimated 1 million American jobs — but it didn't go far enough.

Billions more in federal funding should have been pumped to the state and local levels to help keep school districts, police and fire departments, and homeowners across the country afloat, Reich said.

Banks that took even more billions in taxpayer money to avoid collapse, since they were dubbed “too big to

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Wednesday, February 17, 2010