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Friday, April 16, 2010

Schools Matter: Official: Rhee's $34 Million Imaginary, But She Has Found an Another Imaginary $29 Million to Almost Replace It

Schools Matter: Official: Rhee's $34 Million Imaginary, But She Has Found an Another Imaginary $29 Million to Almost Replace It

Official: Rhee's $34 Million Imaginary, But She Has Found an Another Imaginary $29 Million to Almost Replace It

by Jim Horn
Can there possibly be any more evidence required that the fuming sourpuss, Michelle Rhee, is not up the task--and possibly out of control? From Bill Turque:

The District's chief financial officer said Thursday that a $34 million surplus in the school system's budget, cited by Schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee as a major source of funding for raises promised to teachers in a proposed labor contract, does not exist.
Natwar M. Gandhi's analysis, outlined in a stinging letter to Rhee, is likely to raise new questions about the prospects for an agreement between the city and the Washington Teachers' Union. Thetentative accord introduced last week, which must be approved by union members and the D.C. Council, was the product of more than two years of contentious bargaining and was hailed
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Kent Conrad: It’s Not My Fault That I Decided To Do What I Did � The Quick and the Ed

Kent Conrad: It’s Not My Fault That I Decided To Do What I Did � The Quick and the Ed

Kent Conrad: It’s Not My Fault That I Decided To Do What I Did

by Kevin Carey
Earlier this week I wrote an article for The New Republic blaming Senator Kent Conrad of North Dakota for killing the Obama administration’s college graduation initiative. The crux of the matter is this: In 2009 the House of Representatives passed a bill cutting out for-profit banks as the middleman in the federal student loan process. The Congressional Budget Office estimated that this would save taxpayers $87 billion over 10 years. Anticipating that the bill would pass, colleges across America began switching away from bank-based loans. In March 2010, the CBO issued a new estimate of how much money the bill would save from March 2010 forward. Accordingly, the colleges that switched before March 2010 weren’t included in the estimate. So the estimated future savings dropped to $67 billion. Conrad, the chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, insisted that Congress use the new estimate in determining how much savings


QUICK Hits

by Forrest Hinton
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This Week In Education Districts: Teacher Suspended For "Crashing" The Tea Party

This Week In Education

Districts: Teacher Suspended For "Crashing" The Tea Party

image from www.beavton.k12.or.usBeaverton (OR) school district has put Jason Levin, one of its middle school teachers teachers, on leave for an online anti-Tea Party effort called

Real-Time Roundup [Thursday]

Here's a rolling update of what's going on in educationland right now:
ScreenHunter_44 Mar. 05 19.41
Hit "refresh" to get newer items, or click here to get older items.
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Secretary Duncan Urges Congress to Provide Emergency Support for Education – ED.gov Blog

Secretary Duncan Urges Congress to Provide Emergency Support for Education – ED.gov Blog

Secretary Duncan Urges Congress to Provide Emergency Support for Education

At a Senate hearing Wednesday, April 14 on the Department of Education’s proposed budget for Fiscal Year 2011, Secretary Arne Duncan began his remarks by drawing senators’ attention to a looming financial shortfall that states and local school districts face, even as the U.S. economy recovers.
“We are gravely concerned that the kind of state and local budget threats our schools face today will put our hard-earned reforms at risk,” Duncan told the Appropriations subcommittee that oversees ED’s budget. “Every day brings media reports of layoffs, program cuts, class time reductions and class size increases.”
Potentially hundreds of thousands of educators and other school personnel could be laid off if action is not taken quickly to help states and districts cover their budget shortfalls. Mass layoffs “not only [create] hardships for educators who lose their jobs and the children they teach, but the damage ripples through the economy as a whole,” Duncan said. “Literally tens of millions of students will experience these budget cuts in one way or another. Moreover, schools, districts and states that are working so hard to improve—will see their reforms undermined by these budget problems.”
Duncan urged the subcommittee to consider another round of emergency support for America’s schools, similar to the aid provided to states through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act during the ‘08-’09 and ‘09-’10 school years.
“If we do not help avert this state and local budget crisis,” he warned, “we could impede reform and fail another generation of children.”
Read the Secretary’s prepared testimony or watch a video of the subcommittee hearing.
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The Educated Guess Push for new kindergarten cutoff

The Educated Guess:

Push for new kindergarten cutoff

Posted in kindergarten
A Senate bill to move up the cutoff date for enrolling in kindergarten and to fund preschool with half of the savings has sailed through its first committee. But similar attempts have faltered, even though child advocates and developmental psychologists universally agree that it’s an educationally sound and fiscally smart idea.
California is one of only four states that allow some 4-year-olds to attend kindergarten. The cutoff date for turning five in California is Dec. 2.
Sen. Joe Simitian’s SB 1381 would gradually shift the date so that starting in 2014, a child would have to be 5 years old by Sept. 1 to be admitted to kindergarten. Doing so would reduce enrollment by an estimated 100,000 children over the phase-in period and reduce the state’s kindergarten costs by $700 million. (That savings from that initially small class of kindergartners would follow as they went on through high school.)
(Read more and comment on this post)
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Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: Should we work to turn low-scoring schools around?

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: Should we work to turn low-scoring schools around?

Should we work to turn low-scoring schools around?

by Mike Klonsky
Or are school closings and charters the only way?

I'm in Cleveland at KnowledgeWorks annual Leadership Institute. Great crowd of educators from all over. Last night's forum, led by EdWorks' Director Harold Brown, asked if it's possible to turn around failing schools? Keynoter was Richard Kahlenberg of the Century Foundation. He wrote the solid biography of Al Shanker and now seems like Shanker reincarnate, for better and worse. He makes a strong case for economic desegregation of schools as the key to school improvement.

He was followed by a panel of respondents that even included an educator (OMG!), Sharon Johnson, a principal who led a turnaround at Wilson High in Cincinnati, thereby answering the framing question. Right? No, you don't have to close schools and fire all the teachers. You listening Arne? She even talked about teaching/learning issues, supports for teachers, etc... Be still my beating heart.

Mark Simon from the Tom Mooney Institute, offered a strong defense of union/district partnerships.

But the Fordham Institute's Andy Smarick, holding down the far right-wing of the panel, was having none of it. Smarick claimed that it was a waste of "human capital" to invest in low-performing schools. We should disinvest
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Schools Matter: Broad Winner Led Texas in "School-to-Prison Pipeline"

Schools Matter: Broad Winner Led Texas in "School-to-Prison Pipeline"

Broad Winner Led Texas in "School-to-Prison Pipeline"

by Kenneth Libby
From the Texas Tribune:

"The School-to-Prison Pipeline"


When it comes to discipline, the Aldine Independent School District doesn’t mess around. The large suburban district expelled more students last year — 525 — than any other district in Texas, despite being a fraction of the size of large urban districts, according to state data.
Aldine boots nearly three times as many students as neighboring Houston ISD — which expelled 181 students in 2008-09 — even though its enrollment, about 67,000, is only a third the size. The forced-out students get processed into either the Harris County Juvenile Justice Alternative Education Program or one of two “very strict” special schools run by the Harris County Department of Education, an unusual
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Education - Everything you need to know about the world of education.

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

















VALERIE STRAUSS
The Answer Sheet
A School Survival Guide for Parents (And Everyone Else)
Posted at 6:30 AM ET, 04/16/2010

Any value to U.S. News rankings?

It's the time of year for more U.S. News & World Report rankings, these of graduate schools around the nation. The methodology is very very complicated, but it's hard to find much meaning in any of this.
Posted by Valerie Strauss | Permalink | Comments (2)
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JAY MATHEWS
Class Struggle
What's Right and Wrong With Our Schools
Posted at 5:30 AM ET, 04/16/2010

Five hard truths about charter schools

Charter schools are demanding places to teach and aren't for everybody. Teachers who move from regular to charter public schools "become partners in an enterprise that must sink or swim depending on performance. Hours, assignments, pay, and job security can't be guaranteed by a deep-pocket school district, but are products of collaborative effort at the school level," Paul T. Hill says
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Gandhi says Rhee's surplus does not exist

District Chief Financial Officer Natwar M. Gandhi has told Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee that the $34 million surplus she cited Tuesday as a basis for helping to finance teacher salaries under the proposed new labor contract "does not exist."
Gandhi's finding, conveyed to Rhee in a stinging letter late Thursday, is likely to open up a whole new chapter of contention in the tortured history of the contract, which has been in the works since the end of 2007. While his assessment appears to defuse charges that Rhee opted to sock away money for a new contract rather re-hire teachers laid off in October, it clearly undermines the financial foundation of the $140 million deal.
Gandhi told Rhee that while there is a projected $34 million of under-spending in the school operations sector of the current budget, that is offset by an estimated $30 million in over spending in the system's central office operation. In unusually blunt language, Gandhi also took Rhee to task for what he called a failure to adequately consult his office before revealing the surplus at a meeting with D.C. Council members.
"I was incredulous to learn that in your April 13, 2010 presentation to the Council on the contract you asserted that a surplus is available to fund the proposed salary increases based on preliminary information," he wrote.
In the letter, Gandhi described an e-mail exchange last month between 
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