Ohio Charter School Operators Choose Financial Success Over Ethics

Ohio Charter School Operators Choose Financial Success Over Ethics:

Ohio Charter School Operators Choose Financial Success Over Ethics

Columbus Dispatch readers were shocked, shocked to learn last week that members of Imagine Columbus Primary School’s charter board, protesting that they had no say in negotiating the terms of an operational contract, resigned “en masse” over a lease imposed by the management company that had the school paying $58,000 per month in rent for space to house 150 students, as well as other issues related to the viability of the school.

The board’s action, which did get some attention from the usually somnolent “Ohio’s Greatest Home Newspaper,” was so dramatic that the Casablanca Prefect of Police might have exclaimed it was time to “round up the usual suspects.”

But Captain Renault and the rest of us don’t have to look too far. In this case, the usual suspect is Imagine Schools, a national for-profit charter school chain founded by Dennis Bakke, a well-known Christian evangelical, and his wife, Eileen.

The Bakkes have found great success with Imagine and its subsidiary, SchoolHouse Finance. But as is the case with many charter school enterprises, success is one thing, and ethics is quite another.

When Ohio politicians find out more about this mass board exodus in the course of their debate on the need for systemic charter school reform, the issue with Imagine that pols and the public must confront is whether this charter school denizen is merely a for-profit national educational enterprise or a national real estate enterprise. Or both.

Or most frightening of all, maybe Imagine is just one of many usual suspects in the netherworld called charterdom or charterworld.

Modeling its predictable behavior when the subject is charter schools, theDispatch couched the issue in careful language: “The lease is with SchoolHouse Finance, a subsidiary of Imagine Schools Inc., raising questions about a possible conflict of interest.”

Conflict of interest? When the friend of a governor is appointed to a commission to study the feasibility of charter schools and, using his insider knowledge, forms a charter school management company to coincide with the enactment of the legislation, when one of the sponsors of the original charter school legislation works to have it designed so that a political friend and a family member profit from its enactment, and when a private foundation affiliated with a school management company offers free international travel to members of the legislature as a vehicle for influencing favorable charter school legislation, could these be examples of possible conflicts of interest?

Are we shocked, shocked at these examples? Or when the subject is charterworld, can we channel Donald Rumsfeld and say “There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don’t know. But there are also Ohio Charter School Operators Choose Financial Success Over Ethics:

Oregon opt-out bill draws Education Dept. threats

This week in the war on workers: Oregon opt-out bill draws Education Dept. threats:

This week in the war on workers: Oregon opt-out bill draws Education Dept. threats

Parents are allowed to opt their kids out of standardized tests, and doing so has become an important part of the movement against over-testing. But the U.S. Department of Education is threatening education funding for Oregon over a bill that makes opting out easier. The bill, passed this week by the state Senate and headed to the governor's desk, requires that schools notify parents about their opt-out rights; parents be informed about how much class time will be spent on tests, when tests will be administered, and when results will be available; and parents be informed about how test data will be used and by whom. It also sets up a process for amending school ratings if opt-outs affect test results.

The Obama administration is issuing stern warnings:

But Gov. Kate Brown got a call from Education Secretary Arne Duncan recently—and an official letter from Assistant Secretary of Education Deborah Delisle warned federal funds could be in jeopardy.

“The text of the Oregon bill currently under consideration, proactively encouraging parents to opt students out of assessments and failing to hold districts and schools accountable if they fall below 95% participation, increases the likelihood that Oregon will not meet its obligations under the law and incur enforcement action,” Delisle said in an email in late May.

What they're worried about is that parents will have information about how much school time is taken up by testing and how the testing is used, will know that they have the right to opt their kids out of those tests, and will do so. Just so we're clear about what's going on here. FairTest has an information sheet on opting out, in case your schools aren't offering that information.

Massachusetts legislators are similarly considering a bill that would place a moratorium on the use of high-stakes testing.

Continue reading below the fold for more of the week's education and labor news.This week in the war on workers: Oregon opt-out bill draws Education Dept. threats:

CURMUDGUCATION: Magical Magical Standardized Tests

CURMUDGUCATION: Magical Magical Standardized Tests:

Magical Magical Standardized Tests

We have become accustomed to teacher essay about magical Common Core Standards. "I used to stumble about my classroom drooling and pummeling my students with rote reading rocks until I discovered Common Core, and now I use reading and writing and thinking in the classroom which is awesome because no teacher ever thought of that before ever."

Well, now we're getting Magic of Standardized Tests Essay. Huffington Post has an essay from Teach Plus KIPPster Chris Hoffman about how deeply invaluable standardized tests are to his classroom practice, because with ESEA being discussed we need to remember how important Big Standardized Tests are for every student, every year in order for corporate profiteers to keep pulling in that sweet sweet tax money students to learn. (It should be noted that this was back in March, but somehow I missed it. It still cries for response.)

Hoffman's piece is short on words but long on baloney.

He begins with the story of Alex, a student that Hoffman saved by the power of testing. Alex was actually pumped full of two years worth of learning in just one year, and that reminds us once again that you can't actually measure learning in years, but okay. How did testing help Hoffman perform this feat?

Well, before Alex even entered the classroom, Hoffman checked out his standardized test results. This means one of a couple of things:

1) Hoffman is playing fast and loose with the term "standardized test," because no BS Test that I low of gets results back to teachers before the next school year starts. So Hoffman is talking about some in-house standardized test, which is not at all what ESEA reauthorizers are talking about.

2) California, where Hoffman works, has a speedier turnaround on BS Tests than anyone else I've heard about which, hey, would not be the first time I didn't know something.

3) KIPP schools start in November.

Now, Hoffman acknowledges some limitations:

While these tests never paint a complete picture, they give me a great start. I am able to identify CURMUDGUCATION: Magical Magical Standardized Tests:

Teachers for Teachers | The Philadelphia Citizen

Teachers for Teachers | The Philadelphia Citizen:

Teachers for Teachers 

As school days offer less time for prep and collaboration, teachers find what they need elsewhere—in networks all over the city
by Roxanne Patel Shepelavy

Like so many new teachers, Lisa Hantman entered the classroom ambitious and enthusiastic, with grand plans for how she would engage her young students at the very beginning of their school careers. What she lacked was the experience to bring all those ideas into the classroom. Hantman tried to turn to her colleagues for help—but found their teaching styles and philosophy so different from hers that they could barely communicate. “I’m an innovative teacher, and they were more traditional,” she recalls.

So Hantman sought out like-minded teachers from throughout the city through thePhiladelphia Teachers Learning Cooperative (PTLC), a network of educators that meets every six weeks in a member’s home to hash out real solutions to problems they face in the classroom. “It offered me a formalized conversation about how to become a better teacher,” Hantman recalls.

That was 37 years ago. Hantman, who now teaches third grade at George C. McCall School, is still a member of PTLC—as well as six other teacher networks around town. It’s all part of what she considers a vital piece of educating children in the city: Educating herself. “They help me hone in and perfect my skills with students,” she says. “From hearing other teachers’ stories, whether new or experienced, I learn to be a better teacher, and a better person.”

What Hartman and her colleagues recognized decades ago is truer than ever in Philadelphia: Teachers in this town need each other. Budget cuts over the last few years have left teachers with less time for classroom prep, collaboration with colleagues and in-school professional development—while more is expected of them and their students than ever before. Yet, professional development is consistently at the top of the list when education experts talk about how to improve learning for students. One study, in 2007, found that with 49 hours of “substantial” professional development, teachers can raise their student’s achievement scores by 21 percent. In Singapore, one of the top-ranked education systems in the world, teachers are guaranteed 100 hours of consistent, well-planned teacher training outside of school. They also interact with students no more than 18 of their 42 hours at work, giving them 24 hours for grading, developing teaching plans and honing their own skills, either on their own or with colleagues.

More and more, teachers are forming—or joining—citywide networks, coming together regularly to trade ideas. Estimates are that several hundred teachers in Philadelphia belong to at least 25 different teacher networks.

“Common planning time and collaboration is really important,” says Ami Patel Hopkins, Vice President of Teaching, Learning and Innovation at the Philadelphia Education Fund. “Here, teachers can’t do that as much during the school day. Even if it’s scheduled into their day, they’re often pulled to cover other classes, or to serve as nurses. We don’t have that culture with many of the schools.”

So what’s a Philly teacher to do? More and more, they are forming—or joining—citywide networks of teachers, from different types of schools, who come together regularly to trade ideas about an academic subject (Philadelphia Area Math Teachers Circle); or a political objective (Caucus of Working Educators); or mentorship (Teachers Lead Philly); or networking (PhilaSoup). Hopkins estimates several hundred teachers in Philadelphia belong Teachers for Teachers | The Philadelphia Citizen:

With A Brooklyn Accent: The Coming Education Bloodbath in New York State

With A Brooklyn Accent: The Coming Education Bloodbath in New York State:

The Coming Education Bloodbath in New York State

School districts in New York State are extraordinarily diverse in terms of the resources they have available, as well as in the racial and economic background of their students. Some districts have schools which have an incredible array of arts programs, excellent libraries, and a full complement of intramural and interscholastic sports programs; other districts get by with the basics with sports, the arts, physical education and even honors classes, seen as luxuries. If the most resourced school districts had the neediest students, these disparities might not be so troubling; but as fate would have it, the highest concentration of students growing up in poverty and English language learners often attend schools with the fewest resources.

So what does the New York State government, spearheaded by Andrew Cuomo, decide to do? Does it try to make sure every child in the state has access to the same resources?

NO! It makes sure that every child in the state is held to the same standards and punishes teachers, principals and entire districts if they don't meet them!!!

This approach, is quite simply insane. It presumes you can cajole, threaten and punish your way to equality of outcomes when you do nothing to assure equality of conditions.

We are about to see an educational bloodbath in New York State as these policies are implemented, with teachers, students and families, especially in the poorest school districts, being put With A Brooklyn Accent: The Coming Education Bloodbath in New York State:

The school that puts kids in charge of their own education | Deseret News National

The school that puts kids in charge of their own education | Deseret News National:

The school that puts kids in charge of their own education

On a recent Friday afternoon in a sleepy suburb just west of Chicago, 5-year-old Zeke Banks faces several teenagers seated at a table.

Attentive but unperturbed, with big eyes and curly blonde hair, he peers up at them, answering questions about how and why his older brother, Ollie, 7, had knocked him off a ball he was sitting on several days ago.

The older students form the school’s Judicial Committee, or the “JC” as they call it here at the Tallgrass Sudbury School in Riverside, Illinois. There is one adult in the room, but she doesn’t speak at all. The JC’s job is to enforce the school rules and to keep peace in the community.

The ball incident had left Zeke sobbing, feeling small and violated, but he perked right up when someone reminded him he could “call Ollie up” before the JC later that week.

After listening to both sides, the committee issues a simple warning to Ollie. If it becomes a pattern, the committee will take a harder look. Zeke is satisfied. The JC committee has done its job.

Welcome to Tallgrass Sudbury, part of a radical experiment in American education unlike just about any other. Here, kids of all ages don’t just enforce the rules. They also make them. They vote on budgets and hire and fire staff. Each child and each of the two full-time and three part-time staff members gets one vote — regardless of age.

The 20 students here have a startling degree of autonomy. They choose what they do all day, including what and even if they study. The school doesn’t have teachers: it has “staff members” tasked with helping children develop their own interests, but not to pressure them.

Sudbury schools have been quietly doing their thing since 1968, but now they suddenly find themselves part of a broad push-back against what proponents see as one-size-fits-all factory education.

With the advent of Common Core and the ratcheting up of standardized exams aligned to it, American students are facing increased pressure to get into good colleges, which will hopefully lead to stable careers. But reaction has set in, and 2015 may go down as the year of testing backlash.

Anti-testing “opt out” movements are making headlines in Colorado, Florida and New York. Over 100,000 kids reportedly opted out of tests in New York this year. Meanwhile, homeschooling continues to grow. The U.S. Department of Education estimates that by 2013 1.8 million students were homeschooled, up from 850,000 in 1999.

In the midst of the furor for tighter standards, schools like Sudbury are part of the "democratic" or "free schools" movement. Along with their "unschooled" cousins, estimated at about 10 percent of homeschoolers, these alternative approaches to education are responding not with less testing or structure, but with none.

They propose that kids learn best when left to pursue their own interests, surrounded by stimulating peers of all ages and supportive adults. Sudbury is not a retreat to a quieter past: it’s a plunge into an improbable parallel universe.

They are few, but they are not alone. The Alternative Education Resource Organization lists 102 democratic schools in the United States. And at least two prominent psychologists, based at Boston College and New York University, are optimistic about the results. Could this extreme “opt out” option offer insights on how to cultivate, rather than manufacture, emerging adults?

A low hum

At Tallgrass, there is a pleasant, low hum through much of the day as kids wander around, mingling in groups, talking, playing computer games, or reading. A staff member plays tic tac toe with a younger student.

In the Sudbury model, staff members have valuable talents to share if kids want to avail themselves, but the staff demand nothing of them. No one is forced to do math or read, and many don’t read until they are eight years old or later.

The school occupies several rooms on the upper story of a graceful Methodist church built of grey stone. It’s situated five blocks from the picturesque Des Plaines River, across the bridge from acres of fields and forests surrounding the renowned Brookfield Zoo.

It's a cloudy, cold day and a 16-year-old girl wears bedroom slippers and carries a comforter around with her. At 11 a.m., she chairs the school meeting, where students discuss updating the cleaning assignments, whether to promote the school in a social media contest, and whether to invite a volunteer adult to come work at the school.

After lunch, a mixed-age group gets ready to go play at the park down the street while a

Read more at http://national.deseretnews.com/article/4827/The-school-that-puts-kids-in-charge-of-their-own-education.html#sMLIr7qyG1zQ7Ykk.99

What if all teachers were scholars? SmartBlogs

What if all teachers were scholars? SmartBlogs:

What if all teachers were scholars?

SmartBlog on Education will highlight summer learning and enrichment for educators during June. In this blog post, English teacher Mike Saenz explores the concept of “teachers as scholars.”

As an English teacher, I often find it interesting to pick apart the way we use language. For instance, when asking someone what his or her job is, we usually don’t say: “What is your job?” Instead we say: “What do you do?” In reply, we say something like: “I am a teacher.” I think these phrases are telling. They both imply that a job is not just a thing you do to earn money, but rather your job is what you do, period. (I teach.) The title of your job isn’t just the title of your job, it is who you are. (I am a teacher.)

Because I am a teacher, because teaching is what I do, I should always be looking for ways to upgrade myself and my product. There are techniques I use in my class that need to be improved, lessons that need to be rewritten or customized and processes that I ask my students to work through that often need to be revisited by a teacher. In the summer, I won’t be actively teaching students, but I’ll still be a teacher. It is after all, what I am. So what does being a teacher consist of over the summer?

At my school, we utilize a flexible online curriculum that allows us to customize our courses and create lessons to best meet the needs of our students. So each summer I take a step back and think about what needs to be changed in the courses for the upcoming year. I read through some novels, dramas, short stories and essays that could be interesting to incorporate into lessons. This is fun for me, and certainly improves the classes I teach, but this isn’t enough. After all, since I have the entire summer, each year I should try to tackle at least one ambitious project.

This summer’s project is to address some issues with student writings. Many of my students don’t know how to develop strong points in their compositions. The first places I’m looking for answers to my problem are Aristotle’s “Topics,” and Cicero’s “Treatise on Rhetorical Invention.” Why Aristotle and Cicero? In part because I’m familiar with these authors and find them interesting, and in their works they touch on the students’ problem I’m trying to solve: How do you find the right questions to ask that will prompt a student to expand ideas around a particular subject or stance?

These sources will give me the leads needed to effectively address the above challenge, as well as lead me to other sources or perhaps discover that a lead is a dead end. Whatever the outcome, my experience has been that long-term study (especially of great thinkers) with an eye toward advice for teaching always has good results, even if the results are not the answers to the particular problems you start with. This study is an integral part of what it means to bea teacher. Being a teacher means being a scholar.

Of course, other teachers might naturally study other things according to their interests and needs to solve their respective issues that lead to equally valid results. I’m the only teacher on my campus that studies philosophy and rhetoric on the side, but I’m not the only teacher that comes to the classroom with new and interesting ideas. Other teachers study what they think is most interesting, what will help them develop best, and what will help their classroom and our campus most. This diversity in teachers’ contexts of knowledge is a great advantage on our campus. We bounce ideas off of each other throughout the year, ideas usually coming from radically different places, and it is all of this interesting scholarship that flavors our campus’ intellectual climate.

According to the historian Arthur Bestor, “Liberal education is essentially the communication of intellectual power. That it cannot be communicated by someone who does not possess it — by a teacher who is not also a scholar — is self-evident.” We are teachers. As teachers, we deal with knowledge and thinking. We teach students how to research. We teach how to think critically and how to think creatively. Who then is more responsible than the individual What if all teachers were scholars? SmartBlogs:

What Kind of Workplace Would I Like to Teach in? - Rick Hess Straight Up - Education Week

What Kind of Workplace Would I Like to Teach in? - Rick Hess Straight Up - Education Week:

What Kind of Workplace Would I Like to Teach in? 

 I spent last week at a pretty nifty gathering hosted by the Spencer Foundation. The second of their "disciplined dialogues," the exercise brought about two dozen practitioners, academics, and others together to discuss what it would mean to create a "better teacher workplace." This is a question that has long been seminal for me—back to when I left teaching to enter grad school.

What kind of school and school system would I like to teach in?

Would-be reformers (of all stripes) should ask themselves this question regularly, yet I rarely hear it asked. Now, there are two provisos when raising this question: 1] we're going to disagree about the answer and 2] just because something makes for a better workplace doesn't mean it's a good idea. "Better" workplace conditions often entail costs, and those may not be good bets. (After all, a 25-hour work week might make for a swell workplace, but crimp performance. Big expense accounts and free top-shelf coffee may boost morale, but can soak up a lot of funds without improving results.)

Anyway, I left with four takeaways. 

One, participants were generally disinclined to focus on the workplace question. There was a tendency to leap straight to asking how we "fix schools," with the presumption that doing so will yield a good workplace. That's not an unreasonable focus; after all, schools are there to educate kids. But in most professional environments I've encountered, there's an understanding that good workplaces help attract talented people, make them want to stay, nurture morale and commitment, and help them grow. Whether or not these things boost short-term outcomes, there's a presumption that this stuff is good. Now, it's not like every organization does this well or takes it seriously—lots of law firms, universities, medical practices, accounting firms, and such do a mediocre-to-awful job at all this. But there is an understanding that professionals are real people and not just levers to be pulled. It seems to me that this insight has gotten trampled in much of the school improvement discussion—even (or especially) among those who focus mechanistically on "human capital."

Two, I think all of us seeking to improve or reform schools always do well to ask ourselves, "Are my ideas creating the kind of workplace in which I'd like to work?" If you think you're a reasonably bright and competent person, and you wouldn't want to teach in the schools you're creating, you've got to wonder who will. This mindset can provide a useful filter for thinking about various proposed policies, proposals, and programs. Seems to me that efforts like Public Impact's "Opportunity Culture," Joel Rose's "New Classrooms," or New York City's "The Equity Project" charter schoolare all examples of reforms that consciously work to create a more dynamic, professional, and rewarding workplace. There are other initiatives and policies that don't do this.

Three, discussing the kind of place in which we'd like to work can put some of our more abstract What Kind of Workplace Would I Like to Teach in? - Rick Hess Straight Up - Education Week:

State lacks info on 1,700 Ohio charter-school students | The Columbus Dispatch

State lacks info on 1,700 Ohio charter-school students | The Columbus Dispatch:

State lacks info on 1,700 Ohio charter-school students

As the Ohio Department of Education attempts to close the financial books on last school year, one thing is certain: Making sure charter schools get the right amount of money is no easy task.

The state is continuing to withhold or reduce payments to schools that educate about 1,700 charter-school students because they have been “flagged.” That means the state got conflicting claims about where the students lived or what schools they attended.

Although the number is down from about 5,000 flagged students this spring — mainly because a state computer system that charters and districts use to resolve enrollment disputes went down for maintenance — the 1,700 flags are still more than triple the number the state ended with last school year.

Out of 385 charters, 240 have been paid for students even though it is uncertain whether the students were enrolled at those schools. Other charters might have been shortchanged and are owed money by the state. To lessen the financial blow, the Ohio Department of Education has said it won’t reduce a charter’s payments by more than 5 percent in a month.

But other errors have cut funding by more than 5 percent for some charters: Four charters lost all of their monthly state payments in June, after the state questioned how they were calculating attendance or providing transportation or because of other problems.

One of them — London Academy, sponsored by London City Schools west of Columbus — agreed to assume that every one of its students attended only half a school day after it determined it couldn’t adequately track the number of hours students had worked from home over the Internet, said London district Treasurer Kristine Blind. London Academy received $117,500 in January, but because of the discrepancies, received no state money in May or June.

The schools with the largest number of flagged students are four of the state’s large Internet charter schools, which together have more than 300 students flagged, worth an annual total of about $1.8 million in state education aid. TRECA Digital Academy had the most flags — 117 students, worth about $680,000 in state aid.

“We haven’t been able to reconcile our budget from January on,” said Tim Hilborn, chief instructional officer of META Solutions, TRECA’s parent.

A charter school in Cleveland had the highest rate of flags — more than 19 percent of its 190 students. The New Day Academy Boarding & Day School’s state payments dropped

85 percent between January and June, down about $91,000 a month. The problem: Many students have more than one state identification number, or they have moved among multiple school districts and it’s State lacks info on 1,700 Ohio charter-school students | The Columbus Dispatch:

Pension investment fees: Very little transparency and it’s our money. | Fred Klonsky

Pension investment fees: Very little transparency and it’s our money. | Fred Klonsky:

Pension investment fees: Very little transparency and it’s our money.

Leon Black, head of Apollo Global Management, receives discounts paid for by public pension funds

On Sunday The New York Times business writer Gretchen Morgenson discusses pension theft. This time not by politicians, but by Wall Street private equity firms.

Some might say that is a distinction without a difference.

Who comes first, the investors or the person who manages their money?

That question is crucial for any investor. But it poses a special challenge for retired firefighters, police officers, teachers and other employees who may not know that their retirement money is being held in private equity funds.

These are opaque and costly investment vehicles that borrow money to buy companies and sell them, ideally, for a profit. The secrecy under which this $3.5 trillion industry operates has essentially required millions of people whose pensions are invested in these funds to simply trust that they are being treated fairly.

The pension theft addressed by Morgenson has three components.

Fees to wealthy private equity firms (like Bruce Rauner’s GTCR) are discounted, while public pension funds are charged higher fees. This means our pension funds are essentially underwriting private equity profits in addition to returns on investments. Call it skimming.

The implications of such arrangements seem troubling: Wealthy private equity funds receive discounts on legal, accounting and other outside work while pension fund investors, like retired bus drivers, librarians and teachers, pay full freight or, in some cases, a premium.

A second component of the theft is the charging of fees for work not done.

Regulators have identified certain fees as problematic. One example is the so-called monitoring fee, which investors pay to private equity firms, ostensiblyfor overseeing portfolio companies in the funds.

Often, though, the firms charged investors for the monitoring of companies no longer in fund portfolios. After the S.E.C. highlighted this practice last year, some firms, like Blackstone, stopped doing it.

A third issue is the lack of transparency.

“It puts the lie to the fact that we are partners with the private equity firms,” Mr. Jelincic said. “We are simply a source of income to the general partners; we are not partners.”

Private equity investors have not typically been informed of the vendor Pension investment fees: Very little transparency and it’s our money. | Fred Klonsky:

Refresher: What's in the House ESEA Bill? - Politics K-12 - Education Week

Refresher: What's in the House ESEA Bill? - Politics K-12 - Education Week:

Refresher: What's in the House ESEA Bill?

 House Republicans are hoping to resurrect debate this week on a bill that would overhaul the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, which was yanked from the floor in February after it unexpectedly began losing support from GOP members.

The measure was not on the Majority Leader's weekly schedule, but sources said it could get called to the floor as early as Wednesday under a new rule that allows members to vote on three new amendments in addition to final passage of the bill.

Sounds like it's time for a bill review ...

The Republican-backed measure, authored by Rep. John Kline, R-Minn., the chairman of the education committee, would:

• Keep in place the testing schedule of the No Child Left Behind Act, the current version of the ESEA;
• Eliminate the current accountability system, known as "adequate yearly progress";
• Maintain the requirement that states disaggregate achievement data to show how subgroup students are doing compared to the student population as a whole;
• Require states to intervene in Title I schools that aren't performing well, but not tell states how to do so or how many schools to try to fix at a time;
• Require states to come up with their own challenging academic standards in language arts, math, and science;
• Prohibit the U.S. Secretary of Education from requiring states to adopt the Common Core State Standards, or any other set of standards;
• Bar the secretary from putting "additional burdens" on states through the regulatory process when it comes to standards;
• Eliminate NCLB's "highly qualified" teacher requirements and consolidate other teacher quality programs.

During the two-day floor debate that occurred back in February, lawmakers added some additional provisions through the amendment process. Here are some of the highlights:

• An amendment was adopted that would allow school districts to use locally designed tests in lieu of state tests;
• An amendment was adopted that would allow states to use federal funds to audit the number and quality of tests they use, and eliminate any deemed repetitive or of low-quality;
• An amendment was adopted that would ensure that American Indian children do not attend school in buildings that are dilapidated or deteriorating;
• An amendment was adopted that would allow funds to be used for programs and activities that are designed to enhance school safety.

Notably, the White House issued a veto threat on the House bill, arguing that the measure represents a big step on back on accountability, particularly for the poor and minority students that the federal K-12 law was designed to help.

Also, if you want a little refresher on the entire reauthorization process thus far, check out thistimeline of congressional action.Refresher: What's in the House ESEA Bill? - Politics K-12 - Education Week:

Somebody wants to stop charter schools from having to open their records. - Hartford Courant

Somebody wants to stop charter schools from having to open their records. - Hartford Courant:

Stop Sneak Provision To Derail Charter Openness

The day before the General Assembly's session adjourned, lawmakers voted in overwhelming numbers to make it clear that charter schools and their management companies are subject to the state's Freedom of Information Act — just like traditional public schools.

Alarmingly, the bill, not yet signed by the governor, appears to be under threat by countervailing language said to be ensconced in a budget implementer bill that will be voted on in the coming special session.

The language should be stricken from the budget implementer. Gov. Dannel P. Malloy should sign the charter school-FOI bill.

Those nearly unanimous votes last week spoke forcefully. They said clearly that public agencies and those that act as the functional equivalent of public agencies — as do charter schools and the companies that manage them — should have to disclose vital information.

Information that, for example, shows how they spend their money.

Charter school management companies are not presumed in law to be public agencies, but should be. The scandal-plagued Family Urban Schools of Excellence that manages Jumoke Academy in Hartford is an embarrassing local example of the need for public oversight.

After all, charter schools, while different in some respects from traditional public schools, serve a public purpose and depend upon public funds.

Good charter schools and their management companies ought to be pleased to share their information.

The bill passed 142-3 in the House and 35-1 in the Senate. Yet it was put in jeopardy behind closed doors without notice or a hearing or debate, as happens far too often near the end of legislative sessions when the pace is too hectic for many lawmakers to keep up.

This was just a discussion, apparently, between legislative leaders or their designees and representatives of the Malloy administration about how to neuter the charter school-FOI legislation.

That shouldn't happen.Somebody wants to stop charter schools from having to open their records. - Hartford Courant:

Principal: ‘I cannot be part of reforms that eat away at the moral fabric of our schools’ - The Washington Post

Principal: ‘I cannot be part of reforms that eat away at the moral fabric of our schools’ - The Washington Post:

Principal: ‘I cannot be part of reforms that eat away at the moral fabric of our schools’

K. Butler, right of Benton, Miss., and Lynn Wagner of Hickory, second from right, speak to students as they are guided past their Opponents of Common Core table in the rotunda of the Mississippi State Capitol in Jackson, Miss., Tuesday, Jan. 27, 2015. . (AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis)

This is the ninth in a continuing series of letters between two award-winning school principals, one who likes the Common Core State Standards and the other who doesn’t. The debate over the Common Core State Standards has become so polarized that it is hard to get people who disagree to have reasonable conversations about it. The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news Web site focused on inequality and innovation in education, is hosting a conversation between Carol Burris of New York and Jayne Ellspermann of Florida (in a format that Education Week once used with Diane Ravitch and Deborah Meier as the authors).  The Report’s editors as well as both principals have given me permission to republish each letter.

Burris has served as principal of South Side High School in the Rockville Centre School District in New York since 2000. In 2010, she was recognized by the School Administrators Association of New York State as their Outstanding Educator of the Year, and in 2013, she was recognized as the New York State High School Principal of the Year. Ellspermann is principal of West Port High School in Ocala, Florida.  She has served as a principal in elementary, middle, and high schools for the past 24 years and is the 2015 Principal of the Year for the National Association of Secondary School Principals. 

The first letter was written by Burris, a Core opponent, to Ellspermann, a Core supporter. Burris explained why she once liked the Core but changed her mind after New York State schools began to implement them several years ago. You can read her letter to Ellspermann here. Ellspermann’s reply letter,which you can read here, explained why she thinks the schools in her district benefit from the Common Core. In the third letter, Burris explains why she thinks Core testing hurts disadvantaged students. The fourth, by Ellspermann, says that critics should not blame the Common Core standards for bad implementation and she writes why she likes the English Language Arts emphasis on reading text rather than allowing students to rely on personal experience. In the fifth letter, Burris asked Ellspermann why she thinks she needs the Core. In the sixth letter, Ellspermann responds by discussing why she opposes the opt-out movement and how the Core is working in her school. Burris came back, in a seventh letter, explaining why she doesn’t think the Core will do for students what supporters say it will. The eighth letter, from Ellspermann, (which you can read in the post below this one) talks about why she believes all students should have the same standards. This is Burris’ reply, originally posted on the Hechinger Report on June 4.

Dear Jayne,

I appreciate your belief that all states should have the same or very similar standards. I also believed in national standards before the implementation of the Common Core. Now I believe that variation among states is a strength, not a weakness. If there are different models used by different states, we can evaluate the quality and impact of standards, with an eye to improving them.

You wrote that you are concerned that we have “inconsistencies throughout the country, within our states, in our school districts and even within our schools.” Jayne, the Common Core will not fix inconsistencies among schools and districts within the same state. The large NAEP gaps among schools inthe same state indicate that factors beyond state standards are influencing student performance. The state standards did not create within-state performance gaps.

I am equally baffled that you believe it took the Common Core to move your teachers away from 50-minute lectures. “Talk and chalk” has not been the primary mode of instruction at my school since I became principal 15 years ago. Strategies such as cooperative learning, requiring students to justify their answer with text or reason and other active learning techniques have been known and practiced in good schools for decades. There was nothing in any state’s standards that forced teachers to lecture; and regardless of standards, bad pedagogical practices that do not promote learning, should have been Principal: ‘I cannot be part of reforms that eat away at the moral fabric of our schools’ - The Washington Post:

D.C. Council considers steps to restrict public access to teacher evaluations - The Washington Post

D.C. Council considers steps to restrict public access to teacher evaluations - The Washington Post:

D.C. Council considers steps to restrict public access to teacher evaluations

The Washington Teachers Union and open-government advocates are urging the D.C. Council to slow down a vote that would curb access to information related to teacher evaluations, one of the most controversial aspects of education reform efforts in the District.

A proposed amendment, included in the Budget Support Act that the council is scheduled to vote on Tuesday, would block public record requests for individual education evaluations, “effectiveness ratings,” observations, and other assessments. Summary or aggregate-level data would not be exempted from public release.

Elizabeth Davis, president of the Washington Teachers Union, said the wording of the measure is confusing and could potentially have broad effects, including limiting the union’s ability to represent its members.

She called it a “secrecy provision” that the public should have more time to weigh in on.

“Without access to this data, there’s no way for the public or our union to tell whether the strategies DCPS uses —l ike mayoral control — are helping students or simply creating school closures and high teacher turnover,” she wrote last week in a letter to Phil Mendelson, chairman of the D.C. Council.

Many states have recently passed or amended laws to protect teacher evaluations from being made public. Unions frequently advocate to keep such information private.

In 2010, the Los Angeles Times sparked a national debate when it published teachers names alongside value-added scores that attempt to measure a teacher’s effectiveness based largely on standardized tests. Many educators consider the scores misleading and their publication unfair.

[Virginia pushed into debate of teacher privacy vs. transparency for parents]

District officials said individual-level records are already exempt from public records requests from D.C. Public Schools because they are considered D.C. Council considers steps to restrict public access to teacher evaluations - The Washington Post: