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Sunday, June 20, 2010

HISD scrambles to find the best | Houston & Texas News | Chron.com - Houston Chronicle

HISD scrambles to find the best | Houston & Texas News | Chron.com - Houston Chronicle

HISD policy puts hiring to the test

Grier's tougher standards strain recruiting as fall posts open up

By ERICKA MELLON
HOUSTON CHRONICLE

June 20, 2010, 12:17AM

Recruiters in the Houston Independent School District are scrambling this summer to hire top-notch teachers and principals after cleaning house at several campuses targeted for improvement.
This month - 10 weeks before the new school year starts - the district ousted 162 teachers from nine campuses in Superintendent Terry Grier's "Apollo 20" reform plan. Eighty more teachers left those schools, for one reason or another; most of the principals were forced out.
These holes in staffing come on top of the typical 1,000 teaching vacancies and principal openings that the state's largest school district faces each year.
The hiring frenzy is putting to the test the new recruiting and interview strategies pushed by Grier, who took over HISD in September, and Chief Human Resources Officer Ann Best.
For principals, Grier has encouraged recruiting more from outside the system rather than always promoting from within. For teachers, applicants now must teach a sample lesson - either in person or by video. Elementary and middle school applicants without certification in a specific subject also have to pass a fifth-grade math test.
"Our students struggle in math because a lot of times teachers don't know the math themselves," recruitment leader Carmen Rowan said, adding that about 30 percent of applicants failed the quiz.
HISD also has moved to a new standardized interview process, which has had mixed results in other school systems, and the district plans to rely more next year on novice teachers from Teach for America, a selective program that recruits recent college graduates to commit to two years of work in some of the nation's neediest schools.
Trustees approved on Thursday a $1.7 million deal with TFA for as many as 250 teachers, making Houston TFA's largest market.
The biggest expense is for TFA to recruit and train 50 teachers with strong math and science backgrounds to work in the Apollo 20 schools. That cost is $1 million, or $20,000 for each teacher. That doesn't include their salaries.
School board member Carol Mims Galloway, who abstained from the vote on TFA, has voiced concerns about the
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The Answer Sheet - BP, Bloomberg and teachers: A parody

The Answer Sheet - BP, Bloomberg and teachers: A parody

BP, Bloomberg and teachers: A parody

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg recently said that top executives at BP should not be blamed for the gadzillions of gallons of oil spewing into the Gulf of Mexico from the damaged offshore well.
"The guy who runs BP didn’t exactly go down there and blow up the well," the mayor said on his WOR radio show.
Bloomberg also recently backed away from his proposal to lay off more than 4,400 New York teachers, saying he would freeze salaries instead. The Department of Education still plans to cut nearly 2,000 teacher positions through attrition.
Here’s a news parody that Gary Babad, a clinical social worker, wrote on the NYC Public School Parents blog. Considering how nutty the actual news has been, you can forgive people who read this and thought it was true.

(GBN News): NY City Mayor Michael Bloomberg today reiterated his assertion that BP executives should not be blamed for the ongoing Gulf oil spill. But this time he went even further, telling reporters at a City Hall news
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Daniels: Give old school buildings to charters | IndyStar.com | The Indianapolis Star

Daniels: Give old school buildings to charters | IndyStar.com | The Indianapolis Star

Daniels: Give old school buildings to charters


Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels today called for a law to force public school districts to transfer unused school buildings to charter school startups looking for space.
Daniels said school districts in the state are withholding completely empty buildings from charter schools that are looking for property. Doing so, he said, unnecessarily costs taxpayers money when those charters have to buy or build new schools instead of moving in to the empty ones. Taxpayers paid to build both the empty school and the new charter school.

"People say they should sell them," he said. "Sell them? Hell, they should give them away. The public already paid for them."
Indianapolis Mayor Greg Ballard said it's a problem in Indianapolis and that the charter schools he authorizes have been interested in purchasing buildings that are owned by school districts. He would prefer, though, that school districts be willing to sell or transfer the buildings without requiring the legislature to act.
"Maybe not a law," Ballard said, "by maybe a general policy would be better."
A spokeswoman for Indianapolis Public Schools could not immediately be reached today. The district is closed on Fridays during the summer as a cost-saving
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The core city is only as good as its schools

The core city is only as good as its schools

The core city is only as good as its schools

Robert Rivard - Robert Rivard
Web Posted: 06/20/2010 12:00 CDT



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You and I might not have children attending an inner-city public school, but the San Antonio Independent School District board's pending performance evaluation of Robert Durón, its reform-minded superintendent, could have lasting effects on us all.
Durón was hired four years ago to attack SAISD's chronic dropout rate and to improve academic achievement in a low-income environment where fewer than one in five graduating students attends a four-year university.
He was hired as a change agent in an improving, still-troubled district, not as a caretaker of the status quo. Will the board summon the unity and purpose to allow him to succeed?
A key element in Durón's strategy — endorsed by a blue ribbon commission that studied the issue for a year — has been to shut down failing schools in inner-city neighborhoods with declining populations. Closing schools was seen as the best way to reallocate funds to rebuild the schools that would retain and attract families in the district and provide their children with the teachers, programs and facilities necessary to achieve academic success.
Building a suburban-quality high school campus inside Loop 410 would be a transformative act in a district long accustomed to making do. It would inspire inner-city students, most of them minorities, and give them a tangible reminder they are every bit as smart and important as students in wealthier districts, and every bit as deserving of a first-class public school education.
But closing worn-out schools isn't easy because they are such an important part of any community's sense of place and history. Alumni have a sense of nostalgia for their alma mater, even if the school is underperforming and producing mostly alumni trapped in a world of low incomes and equally low expectations.
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School districts 'race to the top' despite teacher dispute - ContraCostaTimes.com

School districts 'race to the top' despite teacher dispute - ContraCostaTimes.com

School districts 'race to the top' despite teacher dispute

Posted: 06/19/2010 10:06:00 PM PDT
Updated: 06/19/2010 10:06:01 PM PDT



Six Marin County school districts have signed on to the state's second application for federal Race To The Top funding, five fewer than applied for the first round in January. The $4.35 billion program provides stimulus funds to districts that agree to undergo reform measures favored by the Obama administration.
Yet a central provision of the Race To The Top program - ending seniority as the primary criteria for teacher pay - remains highly controversial. Advocates of the program believe teacher raises should be based on evaluations and on how well their students perform on state tests, rather than on how long they've been teaching, as California law requires.
"Teachers would be retained in the classroom based in part on their performance on evaluations - on their effectiveness, not simply on how many years they've been employed in a particular district," said state Sen. Gloria Romero, D-Los Angeles, an unsuccessful candidate for superintendent of public instruction in the June 8
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Chicago News Cooperative - A View From Both Ends of the Educational Spectrum - NYTimes.com

Chicago News Cooperative - A View From Both Ends of the Educational Spectrum - NYTimes.com

A View From Both Ends of the Educational Spectrum


By JAMES WARREN

Published: June 17, 2010

James Warren writes a column for the Chicago News Cooperative.
Jose More/Chicago News Cooperative
Karen Lewis

Chicago News Cooperative

A nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization providing local coverage of Chicago and the surrounding area for The New York Times.
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I attended my first Chicago Board of Education meeting in decades Tuesday and my first Chicago Public Schools kindergarten graduation the next morning. The inadequacies of the former were underscored by the inspiration of the latter.
The board reaffirmed the existing teachers contract, guaranteeing a generous 4 percent raise negotiated by the weak-kneed duo of Mayor Richard M. Daley and Arne Duncan, then the superintendent of Chicago Public Schools and now the United States secretary of education. The board thus eliminated the chance of a strike in the fall as it also affirmed the power of Mr. Duncan’s successor, Ron Huberman, a strong and hard-pressed manager, to perhaps lay off teachers and raise the number of students in classrooms.
“Door Open to 35 in a Class,” declared a Chicago Sun-Times headline, reflecting the prime concern of what essentially is a superficial debate.
In fact, the meeting itself might as well have been choreographed by the Goodman Theatre, given all the role-playing.
Mr. Huberman dispiritedly talked about the need for the money owed by the state and for union concessions, and he detailed a budget deficit that is at minimum $427 million. When it came to the union’s bête noire, the once-comically-bloated public schools central office, he noted the cuts he had already made and cuts still to come and that the central office accounted for just 4 percent of the budget.
Marilyn Stewart, the outgoing leader of the 32,000-member teachers union, bemoaned the imminent “educational malpractice” and the need to “stand up against the mayor and say we can’t stuff 35 kids in a classroom”
Ms. Stewart and Karen Lewis, a chemistry teacher who just defeated her, were among 15 teachers, students and activists who were given an unjustifiably fleeting two minutes apiece to vent.
“This is the start of chaos,” said a college-bound Julian High School graduate. “Don’t cut teachers, because you’re killing our students.”
There were other passionate declarations, some with erroneous accusations and naïve analyses. They included an assumption that the board is paid (it’s not); that renegotiating debt service could be a magic wand; and that tax increment financing, a controversial
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