Tuesday, April 6, 2010

ESEA, NCLB, RTT, SIG, Oh My!! � The Quick and the Ed

ESEA, NCLB, RTT, SIG, Oh My!!

by Chad Aldeman

The Obama Administration has a little bit of a timing problem on their hands. While attempting to re-authorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), it has to simultaneously balance the impending 2014-proficiency-for-all requirement in the last version of ESEA (the law formerly known as No Child Left Behind) with the requirements of the $3.4 billion competitive grant program known as Race to the Top (RTT) and the $3.5 billion in School Improvement Grant (SIG) money. There’s much in common between these three federal reform efforts, but there are also significant differences. The Obama Administration has laid out a smart, balanced blueprint to deal with some of these issues, but it leaves the details to Congress.
I propose another alternative: Let the states figure it out for themselves. At first blush, this sounds more punitive than it is now, but bear with me.
See, NCLB is federal law. If nothing changes and Congress continues to wait on reauthorization, all the current

April Fool | Intercepts

April Fool

by Mike Antonucci

Boston Globe columnist Derrick Z. Jackson believes a “lack of money is killing our public schools.”
If we were to be generous, we could call this a bold position to take. Bold, because it flies in the face of every spending statistic and figure for the last 30 years or so. Even Jackson admits that $9,800 per student is “technically high by global standards.”
But why let the numbers stand in the way of a good recitation of talking points, like how some elite private schools cost $35,000, or how we spend more on college students, or how Germany pays starting teachers more, or how five states spend more on corrections than on higher education (well, let’s assign armed guards to the coeds and lock them in their dorms at night surrounded by concertina wire – that should make up the difference).
Jackson misses nary a shibboleth, and small wonder, because he went to the leader of the tribe, Linda Darling-Hammond,

Small Schools by Mike Klonsky and Susan Klonsky � JD2718

Small Schools by Mike Klonsky and Susan Klonsky

APRIL 6, 2010 AM30 12:04 AM

tags: Klonsky, Small Schools

by jd2718

Here’s a review I didn’t mean to write. I read most of the book in the summer of 2008, while I was in New Orleans, helping (re)organize school teachers. What happened? I thought the book covered important background about what happened with small schools. It reviews their progressive origins. And it details how the corporations and foundations and government grabbed their banner and turned them into something very different. And I should have reviewed and recommended it. The background matters. The narrative matters. The dark fable matters.

But I didn’t write then. Why not? And why now?

Democratic Schools are good, and it is possible to create small schools that are democratic. YES….
became: Small schools are good. NO.

I didn’t write because I was not ready to share my critical evaluation of the (well-meaning,

Surprisingly, Family Time Has Grown - Well Blog - NYTimes.com

Surprisingly, Family Time Has Grown

By TARA PARKER-POPE

Stuart Bradford

Working parents perpetually agonize that they don’t see enough of their children. But a surprising new study finds that mothers and fathers alike are doing a better job than they think, spending far more time with their families than did parents of earlier generations.

The study, by two economists at the University of California, San Diego, analyzes a dozen surveys of how Americans say they use their time, taken at different periods from 1965 to 2007. It reports that the amount of child care time spent by parents at all income levels — and especially those with a college education — has risen “dramatically” since the mid-1990s. (The findings by the husband-and-wife economist team of Garey Ramey and Valerie A. Ramey appear in a discussion paper presented in March at a Brookings Institution conference in Washington.)

Before 1995, mothers spent an average of about 12 hours a week attending to the needs of their children. By 2007, that number had risen to 21.2 hours a week for college-educated women and 15.9 hours for those with less education.

Although mothers still do most of the parenting, fathers also registered striking gains: to 9.6 hours a week for college-educated men, more than double the pre-1995 rate of 4.5 hours; and to 6.8 hours for other men, up from 3.7, according to an additional analysis by Betsey Stevenson and Dan

The Educated Reporter: No comment.

No comment.

by Linda Perlstein

While I was away, I was glad to see I am not the only one who thinks newspaper online comments are a mess.Leonard Pitts Jr. of the Miami Herald and Connie Schultz of the Cleveland Plain-Dealer last week called for a ban on anonymous comments—though the atmosphere on comments threads is so toxic I am not sure requiring names will truly improve it.

In theory, reader comments further the conversation, bring up different enlightened points of view, and so on. In reality, they are predictable and off-topic at best and racist and vile at worst. The Washington Post ombudsman, Andrew Alexander, wrote recently, “For every noxious comment, many more are astute and stimulating.” I would say the math goes the other way around. Eighty percent of the comments on any story involving struggling

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

Bright and Early: The Education Newsblitz

Local school news is thin today, but you can read up on what's happening in schools across California and the rest of the country in your newsblitz:

Federal judges who evaluated California's bid for Race to the Top, a competition for more stimulus money for schools, said it had a bad relationship with its teachers unionsand weak data systems for tracking student performance, the Sacramento Bee writes. California may not even apply for the second round of the competition.
Educated Guess blogs about a think tank's report on how Race to the Top scoring should be changed.
Neighborhood activists in Los Angeles who are blocking the construction of a new schoolhave cost the Los Angeles Unified School District $20 million, the Los Angeles Times reports.
The superintendent of Santa Clara County schools gets mixed marks, the Mercury News writes. The county schools leader has become a flashpoint for controversy in the county around San Jose.

This Week In Education Thompson: Nashville Cuts Despite $500M Tenn. Win

This Week In Education

Thompson: Nashville Cuts Despite $500M Tenn. Win

by john thompson

Yet another sign that RttT isn't any instant solution for state and district budget woes: NPR reports that one of the "least controversial" ways to make up an education deficit is to cut $5 million from the wages and benefits of 600 Nashville school custodians. The district will also reduce the pay of bus drivers by 1/8th. This

Education Research Report: Middle School Mathematics Professional Development Useless?

Middle School Mathematics Professional Development Useless?

Ω
Results after one year of providing teachers math professional development (PD) indicate no improvement on their students' math achievement when compared to teachers who did not receive the study-provided PD. The Middle School Mathematics Professional Development Impact Study: Findings After the First Year of Implementation included 77 schools in 12 districts in 2007-2008. The PD, although purposely designed to be relevant to the curricula that teachers were using in their classrooms, focused primarily on developing teachers' capability to teach positive rational number topics effectively. America's Choice and Pearson Achievement Solutions were the two professional development providers, each operating in half the districts. Teachers who taught the core 7th grade mathematics class in the study schools were assigned by lottery to either receive the professional development or not. Teachers in all of the study schools continued to be eligible for district-provided PD.

Other key findings include:

* Professional development for the teachers produced no statistically significant impact on their students' achievement in the areas covered by the training --ratio, proportion, fractions, percentages, decimals.

Teen Driver Safety targeted in driving safety campaign

What: Teen Driver Safety

When: Thursday, 4/15/2010 5:00pm

Where: Sacramento Native American Health Center, Inc.

2020 J Street Sacramento, CA 95811 2^nd Floor

Facilitated by: Jasper Begay, California Highway Patrol

Please no youth under the age of 13 due to the graphic nature of the film “Red Asphalt V”

High school sophomores targeted in driving safety campaign

April 7, 2008

Gearing up for Teen Driving Safety Week, state officials today will announce the start of a public awareness campaign to reduce the number of California teenagers killed in car accidents every year.

A program called Impact Teen Drivers will begin targeting sophomores at public high schools with information and materials to influence driving habits and cut down on the rate of teen driver accidents, the leading cause of death for youths, according to a press release from Impact Teen Drivers organizers.

Jack O'Connell, state superintendent of schools, CHP Commissioner Joe Farrow, a member of the California Teachers Association and the mother of an accident victim are scheduled to announce the program at 10 a.m. in Room 1190 at the Capitol.

Teen Driving Safety Week begins the week of April 14.

According to a recently released study from the American Automobile Association, crashes in California involving drivers 15 to 17 years old cost $2.8 billion, including medical expenses, loss of life and other damages. The study, based on 2006 figures, reported that teenagers in this group were involved in 66,785 crashes that resulted in 177 fatalities and 27,869 injuries.

Sacto 9-1-1: High school sophomores targeted in driving safety campaign

Read more: http://www.sacbee.com/static/weblogs/crime/archives/2008/04/high-school-sop.html#ixzz0kKbAzyJ7

Op-Ed Contributors - The Myth of Mean Girls - NYTimes.com

The Myth of Mean Girls

By MIKE MALES and MEDA-CHESNEY LIND

Published: April 1, 2010

IF nine South Hadley, Mass., high school students — seven of them girls — are proved to have criminally bullied another girl who then committed suicide, as prosecutors have charged, they deserve serious legal and community condemnation.

Enlarge This Image

Maxwell Holyoke-Hirsch

Times Topics: Bullies

However, many of the news reports and inflamed commentaries have gone beyond expressing outrage at the teenagers involved and instead invoked such cases as evidence of a modern epidemic of “mean girls” that adults simply fail to comprehend. Elizabeth Scheibel, the district attorney in the South Hadley case, declined to charge school officials who she said were aware of the bullying because of their “lack of understanding of harassment associated with teen dating relationships.” A People magazine article headlined “Mean Girls” suggested that a similar case two years ago raised “troubling questions” about “teen violence” and “cyberspace wars.” Again and again, we hear of girls hitting, brawling and harassing.
But this panic is a hoax. We have examined every major index of crime on which the authorities rely. None show a recent increase in girls’ violence; in fact, every reliable measure shows that violence by girls has been plummeting for years. Major offenses like murder and robbery by girls are at their lowest levels in four decades. Fights, weapons possession, assaults and violent injuries by and toward girls have been plunging for at least a decade.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Uniform Crime Reports, based on reports from more than 10,000 police agencies, is the most reliable source on arrests by sex and age.

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: Latest from the Ownership Society

Latest from the Ownership Society

by Mike Klonsky

The greed mongers

"In K-12 education, we submit, greed can be good, albeit ugly." --Fordham's Finn & Hess

Conservative think-tankers like Rick Hess are critical of Arne Duncan's i3reform plan because, they complain, there's not enough room for for-profit companies to feed their bottom lines in the ed reform biz.

According to Hess:

Their selfish pursuit of profit gives them cause to be more aggressive about expansion, more

How they do it in Philly
by Mike Klonsky
People often ask me how how, or if, you can make any money as a charter school operator? Here's how they do it in Philly.

Over half a million bucks in undocumented expenses, and the school's board votes to approve them? Hey, can I get a job there?

Philadelphia Public School Notebook

Notes from the news, Apr. 6

by Erika Owens

Correcting the Corrective Math problem The Notebook blog
This is the first in a three-part series about Corrective Math by guest blogger Caroline Ebby. Part one explains how Corrective Math fits with the District's other math curricula.
Ronnie Polaneczky: A fed probe and a suddenly shy Veronica Joyner Daily News
Joyner founded the Mathematics, Civics, and Sciences Charter School and her school is now facing questions about its finances.
Editorial: Fighting failure The Inquirer
Cautions Superintendent Ackerman not to rely too heavily on charters for her Renaissance Schools turnaround program.
Penn neighborhood blooms around a top school The Inquirer
Penn Alexander Elementary School is luring Center City families west.
Letters: Flash-mob students need something to lose The Inquirer
The Times Are A-Changing Philly Teacher blog
Please email us if we missed anything today or if you have any suggestions of publications, email lists, or other places for us to check for news.
Click here to get Notes from the news in your inbox every day.
Notes from the news
read more

Correcting the Corrective Math problem

by Guest blogger

This week's guest blog is from Caroline Ebby, a lecturer at the University of Pennsylvania's Graduate School of Education. This is the first in a series of three guest blog posts by Dr. Ebby about Corrective Math. This post will give you a little background on the District's current math curriculum and how Corrective Math fits in with that. The second will analyze Corrective Math specifically, and the final post will describe alternatives to the Corrective Math program.

As a mathematics educator and consultant for two Empowerment schools in Philadelphia, I am acutely aware of and concerned about the effects of the Corrective Math program on the achievement gap and students' access to higher-level mathematics. While the need for intervention in mathematics is paramount, the fact remains thatCorrective Math reflects an instructional model that is outdated, overly simplistic, and counterproductive.
read more

This Week In Education News: States Try Taking On Tenure

This Week In Education

News: States Try Taking On Tenure

Obama faces challenges to get rest of plans approved Journal Sentinel: Political observers, analysts and even some lawmakers say the chances are slim that the president will get much of his domestic agenda through Congress in the months leading up to the November elections...States Strive to Overhaul Teacher Tenure EdWeek: While Ohio has delayed the time it takes to earn due process, Delaware will tie the right to student achievement, and Florida has abolished it....Angry Fla teachers line up to testify against bill Martin Merzer, Associated Press: They arrived early, found strength in numbers but shared a sense of futility, their legislative battle almost assuredly lost even before they awakened Monday...Federal funds for drug-free school programs running out Journal Sentinel: A small pool of federal funds that Wisconsin school officials say helps pay for everything from safety officers to anti-bullying efforts is drying up this year, leaving local districts scrambling for alternative revenue sources....Three To Be Arraigned In High School Bullying Case NPR: Three classmates of a 15-year old high school freshman who committed suicide in January are scheduled to be arraigned Tuesday for behavior prosecutors believe led to her death.

A student's challenges parallel his school's - Los Angeles Times

A chance at redemption - Los Angeles Times

A chance at redemption

Jefferson High hopes to turn things around. So does one of its students.

April 05, 2010|Howard Blume

Jorge Garcia represents the past, the present and, potentially, the future of long-struggling Jefferson High School.

As a freshman in 2006 at the South Los Angeles school, he failed all his classes and was kicked out after starting two fights, one of them especially violent. Since then, he's survived five bullet wounds, dealt with his father's fatal illness and become a parent himself.

This year Jorge, 17, returned to Jefferson -- to set an example for his son.

Like the school itself, Jorge wants to turn things around. And like Jorge, Jefferson suddenly has a chance at redemption.

Last month, the Los Angeles Board of Education could have turned over the job of improving Jefferson to an outside operator. Instead, it chose a plan created by Jefferson's teachers.

With new authority, staffers at Jefferson have taken on the crucial test of whether they can fix one of the most historically troubled, low-achieving campuses in the Los Angeles Unified School District.

For decades, Jefferson, with its iconic 1930s Art Deco architecture, served a predominantly African American community and produced such figures as diplomat Ralph Bunche, dancer Alvin Ailey and football standout Woody Strode.

The school, like the area around it, has become a hub for working-class Latino immigrants.

Neighborhood tensions spilled onto the Jefferson campus in 2005, through racially tinged campuswide fights. That year, its test scores were second lowest among L.A. Unified's high schools. The dropout rate jumped to 58% in 2007, according to district records.

Juan Flecha was named principal after the unrest. He restored order, raised test scores somewhat and made key

The Educated Guess Report: correct Race to Top ’scoring deficiences’

The Educated Guess

Report: correct Race to Top ’scoring deficiences’

Posted in Race to the Top

On a day when two California education officials and governors from other states were grousing to The New York Times about the scoring in the first round of Race to the Top, the New York City-based The New Teacher Project released an analysis of the winning first-round applications while also suggesting changes to “scoring deficiencies” that might lead to less-qualified states winning the second round.
Despite the criticisms, The New Teacher Project encouraged states to improve their applications, not back out, to take advantage of “unprecedented window of opportunity for education.”
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Silicon Valley Foundation rescues summer school

Tags: Silicon Valley Community Foundation
Posted in Achievement Gap, STEM, Teacher Development

In a destructive year in which districts everywhere in California are eliminating summer school and cutting way back on training for teachers, the Silicon Valley Community Foundation is stepping into the breach. It has awarded nearly $2 million in grants for summer and after-school programs and year-long professional development for middle school teachers in Santa Clara and San Mateo counties.
The target is smart and strategic: The money will go toward improving algebra instruction and substantially increasing the numbers of students, particularly from low-income minority districts, who are proficient in algebra by the time they enter high school. This will put them on track toward meeting the math and science courses required for admission to a four-year college.
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State’s STEM plan mediocre

Tags: CSI Net, Ohio STEM Innovation Network
Posted in Race to the Top, STEM

Intel, Synopsys, HP, Apple, Adobe, Bechtel, Cisco, DreamWorks.
Irvine, Hewlett and Lukas foundations, Lawrence Hall of Science, Stanford, Cal, Caltech.
California is the source of America’s innovation in science and technology, and a slew of its companies, foundations, universities and non-profits are underwriting science and math education through science fairs, teacher training, new curriculums and all kinds of cool, interactive technologies. (That includes Silicon Valley Education Foundation’s Lessonopoly.)
If any state should get STEM education right, it’s California. But in its Race to the Top application, California was nearly skunked in the bonus section for STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) education.
Four of five judges gave the state zero points, and one gave it the maximum 15, for an average of score of three. (Under the rules, each judge could give either all or no points for having a well-developed STEM education plan, and nothing in between.)
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