Mayor's office withholds records on school contract scandal - Chicago Tribune

Mayor's office withholds records on school contract scandal - Chicago Tribune:

Mayor's office withholds records on school contract scandal

yor Rahm Emanuel's office was more involved in a $20.5 million school contract with a now-indicted consultant than previously disclosed, public records indicate, but his administration has refused to release hundreds of emails that could provide a deeper understanding of how the deal came to be.

Emanuel and his aides have maintained that the mayor's office had nothing to do with the contract to provide leadership training for principals that is at the center of a federal bribery indictment against ex-schools CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett and the consulting firm where she once worked.

When asked in April if his administration had any role at all in the SUPES contract, Emanuel told reporters, "No, you obviously know that by all the information available. And so the answer to that is no."

Yet the mayor's office and schools officials have been in an ongoing struggle with the Tribune over reporters' public records requests that could bear directly on the controversy, withholding many emails for months before releasing them, several so heavily redacted that little more than the subject line and addresses remain.

The Emanuel administration has declined to provide about half of the roughly 1,000 emails requested. As part of that fight, the Tribune in June sued the city under the state Freedom of Information Act after the mayor's office redacted or withheld about two dozen emails emanating from Emanuel's office.

While much of the picture remains missing, the email logs and documents the administration did release show frequent communication among key Emanuel aides, Chicago school leaders and the heads of the SUPES Academy consulting firm in the months, weeks and days leading up to Emanuel's hand-picked school board awarding the contract in June 2013.

Former Chicago Public Schools chief to plead guilty to bribery scheme

The consulting firm's ties date to the beginning of Emanuel's administration in 2011; in addition to recommending Byrd-Bennett, SUPES co-owner Gary Solomon helped recruit Emanuel's first schools CEO.

Specifically, the email logs indicate that key CPS officials and SUPES executives had numerous discussions about the SUPES firm and principal leadership training — a crucial element of Emanuel's education agenda — ahead of education meetings in the mayor's office in May 2013 and in June 2013, prior to the board vote. Those meetings included the mayor, his top education adviser Beth Swanson, Byrd-Bennett and top CPS officials involved in the SUPES discussions, according to copies of Emanuel's public calendar.

On Thursday, Byrd-Bennett and the co-owners of SUPES were indicted on charges that she steered them the no-bid business in return for promises of more than $2 million in kickbacks, other perks and a future job. Prosecutors alleged that Byrd-Bennett schemed with her SUPES colleagues even as she was joining CPS.

PDF: Read the Barbara Byrd-Bennett indictment

Much of the alleged scheming is laid out in the federal indictment by way of emails between Byrd-Bennett and Solomon. It's unclear what type of email accounts were involved and therefore hard to know whether the emails should have been turned over in response to Tribune requests for public records.

SUPES' work at CPS predated Byrd-Bennett's time as CEO. The firm had begun providing leadership training for school executives in 2012, months before she took over the reins at CPS.

But by early 2013, efforts to expand the program were growing, and emails obtained by the Tribune show SUPES' co-owners and CPS officials discussing how to secure more money to broaden the training. Some of those emails were exchanged on the same day in May Mayor's office withholds records on school contract scandal - Chicago Tribune:

Put Public Education Out Of Its Misery Already

Put Public Education Out Of Its Misery Already:

Put Public Education Out Of Its Misery Already

Wouldn’t it be great if we could implement some grand scheme to ensure that all children, regardless of where they live, regardless of who their parents are, get a good education?

Those who oppose Common Core, or Race to the Top, or No Child Left Behind are often nevertheless convinced that government should carry out some other kind of school reform, possibly under the auspices of the individual states. Lately, copying Finland has been a popular idea, although their government system is also beginning to crumble.

Many believe charter schools (public schools freed from many regulations) should be given more freedom and their numbers expanded. Some libertarians argue it is ethically wrong for the government to provide universal, “free,” and compulsory education, and that education should be left to the parents. But libertarians may also feel the positive ring that “providing all children with a high-quality education” has to it.

In my forthcoming book, “Education Unchained: What it takes to restore schools and learning,” I take a different approach to the role of government in education. I demonstrate that we simply cannot reform the education of “our” children “together.”The good thing is, we could easily make changes that, within a few years, would provide virtually all children with a kind of education superior to anything that has come before. But we simply cannot do it “together.”

Government Isn’t the Answer—We Are

In fact, almost no matter what kind of government reform we carry out, the quality of education in the United States, Britain, or my native Sweden will at best remain in its current abysmal state. But most commonly the net outcome of a government reform will be that education quality deteriorates even further. Despite their enthusiasm and good will, charter schools and home schoolers today constitute not even halfway houses towards reform. They are more like a tenth of a way towards it, even though in the future both groups may become the sources of great education.

Despite their enthusiasm and good will, charter schools and home schoolers today constitute not even halfway houses towards reform.

We must snap out of it and look at education clearly. First of all, education is, or at least ought to be, the outcome we seek. Schools are, or rather should be, mere tools to provide children with education. For various reasons, though, we treat schools as if they are a goals in themselves, as if they are some kind of tribal initiation rite, a ritual everyone has to go through.

Secondly, a hidden assumption is that we “know” what good education is. No, we don’t. To begin with, we all have different ideas about what good education means. Even more importantly, we do not have a meter, an instrument in our brains that can measure quality. Instead, we measure quality by comparing things. A high-quality mobile phone from 2003 is a joke today. Few would buy a high-quality car from 1951. When the government provides us with education, identical for all, by definition we have nothing to directly compare with.

We treat schools as if they are a goals in themselves, as if they are some kind of tribal initiation rite.

We have also largely forgotten how good education used to be. In fact, just how bad schools are today, compared to the schools of old, is hard for most of us to fathom. In my book, I estimate we have lost about six years of education over twelve years for academically minded pupils, compared to the government systems of, say, Sweden in 1878 or 1968. This means for practically minded pupils the fall in quality is more than 100 percent. For these children, schools today destroy value.

Thirdly, we treat education as if the laws of nature somehow do not apply. We improve, Put Public Education Out Of Its Misery Already:

Teachers unions hope Hillary Clinton will undo Arne Duncan’s work - Vox

Teachers unions hope Hillary Clinton will undo Arne Duncan’s work - Vox:

Teachers unions hope Hillary Clinton will undo Arne Duncan’s work

Education Secretary Arne Duncan pushed states into adopting Common Core standards, oversaw a massive expansion of charter schools, and urged states to tie teacher pay to performance. The next presidential administration — Republican or Democrat — could roll back that legacy.

Duncan announced October 2 that he'd step down at the end of the year. And whether Duncan's influence will endure depends on the next presidential administration. Some expert observers argue that a Clinton administration could undo Duncan's work — and teachers unions are hoping she will.

"I think she's going to be different," Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, said of Clinton when the union endorsed her this spring. The National Education Association did so last week. "She’ll follow the evidence, and she’ll talk to people and give people their due, instead of thinking about things ideologically, as you’ve seen in the last 10 years."

How Arne Duncan transformed education in the US

As education secretary, Duncan used a combination of carrots and sticks — federal grants and waivers from penalties under No Child Left Behind — to get states to change their approach to education. He encouraged states to allow more charter schools, to sign on to the shared Common Core standards, and to tie teachers' professional evaluations to their students' test scores.

Under Duncan's tenure, 43 states have launched the Common Core. Thirty-five states now require test scores to be a "significant" factor in how teachers' performance is judged. States have changed their laws to be more open to charter schools.

All of these policies have been controversial, including with teachers unions. Earlier education secretaries mostly used their influence to issue important reports or bring governors together to work on shared goals. But Duncan was actually reshaping local education from Washington, actions that led one Republican senator to describe him as "chairman of the national school board."

Duncan says he just provided political cover for growing support for education reform at the state level: "You see this much change and improvement in states that didn’t get a nickel," he told me in an interview in September. "While the money was important and significant, it was actually probably less important than the space and the opportunity to do the right thing."

How Clinton could dismantle Obama's education legacy

The Clinton campaign hasn't yet released its K-12 education agenda — but there's already a battle over what type of president she would be on education. Both reformers and unions point to Clinton's lifelong interest in education to argue that she would take their side.

Clinton has so far received endorsements from the National Education Association and American Federation of Teachers, the two national teachers unions. Both have harshly criticized Duncan and his reforms.

When Clinton answered questions from the National Education Association, she provided detailed, specific answers the members liked — downplaying the role of charter schools, Teachers unions hope Hillary Clinton will undo Arne Duncan’s work - Vox:

What the increasingly oppressive climate in many schools is doing to kids - The Washington Post

What the increasingly oppressive climate in many schools is doing to kids - The Washington Post:

What the increasingly oppressive climate in many schools is doing to kids

Leslie Gaar is a former teacher who currently works in public schools training and coaching teachers. She is also  the mother of three and a blogger whose work has been featured on Scary Mommy, TODAY Parents, and Mamalode. She blogs at www.pailsandfires.com. Find her on Facebook and Twitter. In this post, she wrote about something that she disturbs her every time she sets foot into an elementary school these days: what she calls an “increasingly oppressive, harsh environment” in which many young students are educated.

By Leslie Gaar

The speaker used a firm tone of voice that left little room for discussion.

 In 30 seconds, everyone should be in line.

Ten.

Five.

Time is up.

Everyone stand up, hands behind your back, walk back to the room.

NO TALKING.

This conversation was one I recently overheard not in a prison or detention center, not in a courthouse or police station, but in an elementary school– a typical, run-of-the mill elementary school in the suburbs. It happened between a kindergarten teacher and her students. They weren’t in trouble or anything; this was just a routine bathroom break, like the ones that happen a few times each school day.

I work in public schools and can be found navigating their halls on a regular basis. I wish I could say the conversation above was an isolated incident, not representative of other schools I have been in, but that is just not the case. I’ve seen and heard exchanges like this hundreds, maybe even thousands of times, in all sorts of schools– even the “good” ones. As a teacher, I myself participated in these types of interactions daily, but it wasn’t until recently that I began seeing them in a whole new light.

A bit of history: I was a classroom teacher for eight years before taking a break to stay home with my children. When I returned to the education field a couple of years later, it was in a different capacity than before. I began training and coaching teachers, as well as working with administrators to promote best practices on their campuses. This role shift has given me a different perspective on an environment which was as familiar to me as my own skin, and it continues to be eye-opening in a number of ways.

Out of this experience, a question began to bubble up inside of me and has continued to swell so that I can no longer ignore it. That question is this:When did we start running elementary schools like prisons?

When did it become both accepted and routine to address 5 years olds (and 6 and 7 year olds) with barking orders instead of kind, encouraging words? Was it really that long ago that our own kindergarten and first grade classrooms were filled with the sounds of nursery rhymes, laughter, and children at play? Is the world today really so different than it was 20 or even 15 years ago that it warrants a new, harsher brand of education?

I don’t entirely know the answer, but I suspect that one culprit, among others, What the increasingly oppressive climate in many schools is doing to kids - The Washington Post:

Parents Struggle With The Ways Gentrification Changes A Bilingual Schools | ThinkProgress

Parents Struggle With The Ways Gentrification Changes A Bilingual Schools | ThinkProgress:

Parents Struggle With The Ways Gentrification Changes A Bilingual Schools

On an unusually cold October day, children were exercising on the gleaming floor of Powell Blingual Elementary in Washington DC’s Petworth neighborhood. It was an overcast, rainy day but the school’s picture windows allowed the natural light to pour in and highlight all of primary colors of student’s artwork – some of which featured maps naming countries in English and Spanish and drawings of Frida Kahlo.

“I need your energy, guys. I need energy. Mas energia, por favor!” a man instructed the students.

All over Powell’s walls, you will find forms and flyers for parents in both English and Spanish, including one for Hispanic Heritage Month, which will be celebrated at the school this week. High parental involvement is essential to Powell and teachers and administration do a lot of work to reach out to families by scheduling home visits, which allow teachers to visit a child’s home and observe how much the child speaks certain languages versus others, and setting up parent and principal meetings once every month.

Powell has one parent meeting at 9 a.m. and another at 5:30 p.m. to make sure all parents are included. Primarily Spanish-speaking parents tend to go to the morning meeting, where there is a professional translator, and primarily English-speaking parents attend the evening meeting, where parents fulfill the role of translator if needed. Because Powell is a neighborhood school, it has been affected by Petworth’s gentrification over the years. Parents have also come from outside of Petworth to attend the school as the reputation of its bilingual program grew.

Carla Ferris used to be one of a very small number of white parents at Powell. Her son is in preschool and her daughter is in first grade.

“This neighborhood is gentrifying and the schools are gentrifying. So my first year at Powell? I was the blonde lady … And they used to mix me up with another blonde lady. But it’s totally different now,” Ferris said.

She decided to enroll her child in daughter at Powell instead of Oyster-Adams Bilingual School, which is across the street from her home, because it was important to her and her husband, who is from El Salvador, that their daughter be able to speak Spanish and have ties to her culture.

Artwork by pre-K students at Powell Bilingual Elementary

“What I love about Powell is that the Spanish they get there is a lot more organic. I wanted a school where they would have a lot of native speakers that were their playmates. For so many reasons, you know, like cultural differences, family differences, language differences,” Ferris said. “For the longest time, our daughter would flatly refuse to speak Spanish. She could understand a little but she wouldn’t speak it. And after kindergarten, when they started really teaching them Spanish, all of a sudden, girl loves to speak Spanish. She speaks it with her friends. So that’s been really interesting.”

Powell’s white student population has grown from 1 percent in the 2010-2011 academic year to 5 Parents Struggle With The Ways Gentrification Changes A Bilingual Schools | ThinkProgress:

Leadership Issues Could Cloud Federal K-12 Picture - Education Week

Leadership Issues Could Cloud Federal K-12 Picture - Education Week:

Leadership Issues Could Cloud Federal K-12 Picture

Congress and the Obama Administration Confront a Lengthy To-Do List on Education

By Alyson Klein

The one-two punch of turnover in the top leadership of Congress and the U.S. Department of Education complicates the prospects for completing unfinished business on the federal K-12 policy agenda.

As both Speaker of the House John A. Boehner and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan prepare to step down, the inevitable uncertainty during such transitions further unsettles the outlook for an Elementary and Secondary Education Act overhaul and for any new regulatory moves by the Obama administration.

With or without Duncan at the helm, it's unclear just how much political juice the Education Department has left to work its policy will on states.

Unlike its first years in office, when the administration was flush with one-time education funding under the federal economic-stimulus package, the department doesn't have much money left to entice states to adopt its priorities through competitive grants.

Hot Seat

U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, who has announced his resignation effective in December, is the ninth secretary to helm the U.S. Department of Education since its birth as a cabinet-level department in 1980. Here’s a list of those who have served as secretary and the presidents who appointed them.

Shirley M. Hufstedler: 1980-1981 (President Jimmy Carter)

Terrel H. Bell: 1981-1985 (President Ronald Reagan)

William J. Bennett: 1985-1988 (Reagan)

Lauro F. Cavazos: 1988-1990 (Reagan/President George H.W. Bush)

Lamar Alexander: 1991-1993 (President George H.W. Bush)

Richard W. Riley: 1993-2001 (President Bill Clinton)

Rod Paige: 2001-2005 (President George W. Bush)

Margaret Spellings: 2005-2009 (President George W. Bush)

Arne Duncan: 2009- (President Barack Obama)

SOURCE: Education Week

And it seems reluctant to drop the hammer on states to drive policy—for instance, by withholding aid or pulling a state's waiver from the mandates of the No Child Left Behind Act, the ESEA's current version.

"What's in their toolbox?" said Terry Holliday, a former Kentucky commissioner of education.

And he doesn't think John B. King Jr., the former New York state schools chief who will serve as acting secretary after Duncan leaves in December, is a throw-thunderbolts-from-Washington kind of guy.

"I don't think John King will have the desire to really create a lot of mandates on states," Holliday said. "I think having been a former chief helps, and I think he'll try to work with states to honor their work over the last several years."

That power drain is typical for the end of any administration and would likely have happened even if Duncan, who came in with President Barack Obama in 2009, had stuck it out until the end.

As an administration draws to a close, "essentially you're trying to keep the policies and practices and pushing hard in places as much as possible," said Sandy Kress, who served in the White House during President George W. Bush's tenure.

"And you maybe try to repair and restore where there may be some ill will," Kress said. "You keep one eye on the Hill, and the other eye is simply trying to keep the machinery running. You want to end on as good a note as you can."

ESEA Pending

The most obvious outstanding piece of business for the administration: reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act.

It looked as if this was finally going to be the year for the rewrite, which has been stalled since 2007. Over the summer, the Senate passed a bipartisan revision of the law, and the House passed one with Republican support only.

Both bills would take aim at the administration's priorities—including teacher evaluation based in part on student outcomes—and both would quash the education secretary's power to dictate details of state accountability systems

The bills' sponsors and the White House appear eager to get ESEA reauthorization completed, and congressional and administration aides are said to be working feverishly, with an eye to finishing the bill this fall. But lawmakers face a crowded legislative calendar, including a pending fight over lifting the federal debt ceiling.

And the administration and congressional Republicans are searching for the sweet spot when it comes to accountability: The administration has made it clear that neither bill does enough, in its view, to prod states to look out for low-performing schools and students.

Plus, the news of Duncan's plans to leave his job came on the heels of another blockbuster resignation: Boehner, the Ohio Republican who is the House speaker and was an architect of the No Child Left Behind law, announced in late September that hewould step down at the end of October.

But as of late last week, it was unclear exactly who would take his place. Meanwhile, Boehner said he would stay until a new speaker is in place, potentially giving ESEA negotiators time to pass a bill under his leadership.

What's more, over the summer, Rep. John Kline, R-Minn., the chairman of the House education committee and the author of the chamber's bill to rewrite the ESEA, Leadership Issues Could Cloud Federal K-12 Picture - Education Week:

Charter advocates release poll that shows support for L.A. expansion - LA Times

Charter advocates release poll that shows support for L.A. expansion - LA Times:

Charter advocates release poll that shows support for L.A. expansion

The public relations battle over a $490-million privately funded proposal to expand charter schools in Los Angeles is officially in full swing.

California’s charter schools association and the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation on Monday will release the results of a poll commissioned by the pair of organizations that shows about 70% of registered voters surveyed support an expansion of charters.

These are publicly funded but privately managed schools. Most are nonunion.

Release of the poll comes a day before a scheduled protest by the teachers union of the charter expansion plan spearheaded by the Broad Foundation. United Teachers Los Angeles has been a vocal opponent of the proposal.

In a city where charter schools have flourished, often pulling students and funding away from traditional public schools, the stakes are high. L.A. Unified leaders and charter advocates have been at odds since a copy of the proposal was obtained and published by The Times.

The Great Public Schools Now proposal calls for 260 new charters in eight years, an effort that would more than double the number of students enrolled in these schools.

Gregory McGinity, co-executive director of the Broad Foundation, said the proposal is merely a draft that could develop with input from the community. He said that’s why the foundation commissioned the poll of 1,150 registered voters who live within L.A. Unified’s boundaries. Most did not have children in the public schools.

“It gives you at least a snapshot in time of where the citizens of Los Angeles are and it’s clear, again from the poll, that they want high-quality seats,” McGinity said. “They don’t believe there are enough high-quality seats in Los Angeles.”

Board of Education President Steve Zimmer said there is no dispute that people support charters, but he said the expansion plan is focused on the growth of those schools at the expense of children served by L.A. Unified. Zimmer said he has not been approached to discuss ideas for expanding charters while also investing in traditional public schools.

“I am someone who will work with everyone, who is interested in transforming public education outcomes for all children,” Zimmer said. “I don’t think that window for substantive conversation, if it’s about all and not just some kids, has closed.”

The poll asked voters about their views on local public schools, the teachers union, charters, classroom teachers and the Los Angeles Unified School District.

Many questions focused on charter school expansion. Voters were given positions from opponents and supporters of charter schools and asked if any of those arguments made them more or less likely to support expansion.

About 69% of voters support expanding the number of public charters in their neighborhoods and 64% support doubling the number of students in charters, the poll found.

The poll also showed that voters favor traditional neighborhood schools and charters about the same, and that 88% of those surveyed also support investing in existing public schools to create more successful programs like magnets.

In recent weeks, L.A. Unified and charter advocates brandished different state testing results to show areas of success with students. Charter supporters pointed to data that have those schools outperforming traditional public campuses, while the district offered its own analysis that highlighted magnet programs as higher performers than charters.

McGinity said one focus of the poll was to determine whether the plan should be expanded to potentially include partnerships with L.A. Unified to build on successful programs.

“Maybe there is a way that we can replicate high-quality magnets and other high-quality Charter advocates release poll that shows support for L.A. expansion - LA Times:

Some Key Education Programs Alive in NCLB Rewrite, But Dead in the Budget - Politics K-12 - Education Week

Some Key Education Programs Alive in NCLB Rewrite, But Dead in the Budget - Politics K-12 - Education Week:

Some Key Education Programs Alive in NCLB Rewrite, But Dead in the Budget

If you care about K-12 education, there are two things you're probably watching in Congress this fall: the federal budget process and the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act.

But, when it comes to some federal programs—including top priorities of the Obama administration and congressional Democrats—these two legislative trains don't seem to be on the same track.

There are a handful of high-profile programs that the Obama administration, Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash. (the top Democrat on the Senate education committee), and other key Democratic lawmakers pushed to include in a bipartisan Senate bill to reauthorize ESEA.

But those same programs, or others with very similar purposes, get zero dollars in a partisan spending bill approved earlier this year by the Senate appropriations committee. They're alsonixed in a House appropriations bill.

The programs include: Preschool Development grants (currently funded at $250 million, although the White House wants $750 million), Investing in Innovation (currently funded at $120 million, the administration wants $300 million), and Striving Readers, a literacy program needy schools (currently at $160 million, and the administration isn't asking for an increase.)

By contrast, Senate's bipartisan ESEA bill includes new state grants for early childhood education, a huge priority for the Obama folks and Murray, some language allowing for federal funds to be used for i3-like purposes, which is really important to the administration, and a comprehensive literacy program. The latter is something the administration likes, but it's a particular passion of Murray's. She's introduced legislation a few years in a row creating a new literacy investment. They're not exactly the same as the programs being cut, but they're really, really similar. 

How exactly can these programs exist in one bill and not the other? Here's a quick tutorial:The ESEA renewal bill is an "authorization" bill, meaning it details what policies should govern K-12 education. It sets out broad parameters for new programs, but it doesn't actually fund them. That's left up to "appropriations" bills.

But here's the problem: Once a program is defunded, it's hard to get the money back. (Just ask fans of the now-departed Even Start Family Literacy program.)

So why bother fighting and horsetrading for a new authorization if the spending committee isn't going to cough up the funds to make the program a reality?

Basically, an authorization makes a program legit, said Joel Packer, the executive director of the Committee for Education Funding. Authorized programs may not get funded, but unauthorized ones pretty much never do.

"You want to have an authorization," he said. "If your program is not authorized then that's that."

So far, Democratic lawmakers haven't made a huge deal about the differences between the spending bill and the ESEA bill publicly, probably in the spirit of harmony and bipartisanship.

Will that continue? Some Key Education Programs Alive in NCLB Rewrite, But Dead in the Budget - Politics K-12 - Education Week:

Clive McFarlane: There's more to education reform than charter schools - telegramcom

Clive McFarlane: There's more to education reform than charter schools - News - telegram.com - Worcester, MA:

There's more to education reform than charter schools

Gov. Charlie Baker’s bill to add up to 12 charter schools annually outside the existing cap on such schools shouldn’t surprise anyone.

Ask conservatives to speak on public education and 95 percent of the time two words are all they will need to open, expound on and close their remarks: charter schools.

Back in the early 1990s, when business leaders, educators and policymakers were wrestling with reforming the state public education system to provide all children an opportunity to learn at a high level, it was one of Baker’s predecessors, Bill Weld, who introduced the poison pill, charter schools legislation, into the 1993 Education Reform Law.

If we are magnanimous enough to ignore the unsustainable financial burden of a dual education system, one in which the charter school, like a parasite, feeds on the lifeblood of the regular public schools; and if we were to ignore the selective enrollments of most of these schools, we could say some charter schools have been successful.

But even then, when we also consider that a number of them are not doing any better than regular public schools, and indeed that a number of them have failed, sometimes miserably, there is simply no overwhelming evidence to support creating more charter schools.

My suggestion to Mr. Baker, then, is that on the subject of public education he ought to diversify his current two-word repertoire, and that he doesn’t need to doff his business cap in order to think outside the box.

It would perhaps help if he would sit down with the good folks over at the Rennie Center for Education Research & Policy, and would talk to them about the work they have been doing around labor management collaborations, an initiative that they feel has the potential to help educators improve student learning and success.

From facilitating interest-based bargaining to helping districts create capacities to collaboratively advance student learning, the initiative is pushing the premise that collaboration among districts, unions and community leaders can promote higher-quality learning, enable a greater range of Clive McFarlane: There's more to education reform than charter schools - News - telegram.com - Worcester, MA:

Hold charter schools accountable

Hold charter schools accountable:

Hold charter schools accountable

The 40 percent failure rate for charter schools in Indianapolis is very disconcerting. The local NAACP would prefer that there be a moratorium on any expansion of charter schools until more effective results are demonstrated, without the disastrous effects of multiple school closings. This proposal was presented by the NAACP to the City-County Council five years ago without a response.

However, during these subsequent years, the NAACP has concentrated on mutual dialogue in proposing recommendations that would perhaps increase the accountability for these schools. These conversations began with the mayor’s Office of Education Innovation when it was first instituted. These conversations were always welcomed and have resulted in continuous back-and-forth information sharing, and, at times, disagreements on ideology.

With our most recent meeting, the new office director was very open and agreeable with our recommendations for modifications to the accountability framework. Our recommendations were based on research and experience as urban educators, with the intent of increasing the success of these schools and reducing the likelihood of school closings. What gets measured is what gets done.

We still advocate for a moratorium on the expansion of charters in efforts to prevent continued experimentation with the most vulnerable children. However, for all of those who have the same concern that we have, we encourage you to push for the moratorium and, at the same time, engage in dialogue with the mayor’s office to make recommendations for increased accountability.

Carole Craig, Greater Indianapolis NAACP Education Committee

INDIANAPOLIS STAR

What will next Indy mayor do with charter schools?

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The Common Core wins the war - POLITICO

The Common Core wins the war - POLITICO:

The Common Core wins the war

A MESSAGE FOR 2016 GOP CONTENDERS: The Common Core has won the war, POLITICO’s Kimberly Hefling reports. As Education Secretary Arne Duncan prepares to step down, the standards that naysayers love to call “Obamacore” have become the reality on the ground for roughly 40 million students — or about four out of every five public school kids. In more than half of all states, millions of students took new standardized tests last spring based on the standards, and the expected uproar over these test scores hasn't materialized. The conspiracy theories about how Common Core would require monitoring kids via iris scans, force teachers to use porn to help students learn to read or ban teaching cursive have largely quieted. After years of hand-wringing, very few of the 45 states that fully adopted the standards have attempted a clean break — and those that did found it wasn’t easy to do.

Story Continued Below

— Republican presidential candidates haven’t given up the fight. Donald Trump recently called the Common Core a “complete disaster,” and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz proclaimed they should be abolished — along with the Education Department. Chris Christie, Mike Huckabee and Bobby Jindal all renounced the standards, while Jeb Bush has grown increasingly tepid.

— Yet as Common Core becomes more commonplace in public schools (and in many Catholic schools), some prominent Republicans concede they've lost their battle. Take former Gov. Jan Brewer of Arizona. As governor, she signed an executive order banning the use of the words Common Core by state agencies, though the standards themselves were still firmly in place. She wrote in a recent column on the Fox News website [http://bit.ly/1Qz7jai] that implementation of the standards is “succeeding.” Kimberly has the full story for Pros: http://politico.pro/1LHnKU6.

— On a related note: Forty-four percent of parents surveyed in a new poll out today said standardized tests are fair and have had a positive impact on schools overall. And more than half of African American parents said either that too few tests are administered in schools or the number of tests given is just right. That’s all according to Education Post:http://bit.ly/1MmnRz5.

TODAY IS MONDAY, OCTOBER 12. Maggie Severns here. For the dedicated readers browsing this tipsheet during a well-earned Columbus Day break: Enjoy! Take an extra nap for me, please. You can also send me news and tips at mseverns@politico or @maggieseverns. Caitlin Emma will be back tomorrow: cemma@politico.com or @caitlinzemma. Send events to:educalendar@politicopro.com. And follow us on Twitter: @Morning_Edu and @POLITICOPro.

AN MBA FOR HILL STAFF: Working on Capitol Hill may be a dream job for ambitious recent graduates ready to start their ascent to the top, but the grind doesn’t leave much time for anything else. But a new, one-year University of Minnesota MBA program is designed specifically for congressional staffers. “It’s hard for them to do it,” said Steve Parente, associate dean of the university’s Carlson School of Management. During his years working with Hill staff on health

Read more: http://www.politico.com/tipsheets/morning-education/2015/10/the-common-core-wins-the-war-mba-program-comes-to-capitol-hill-un-sets-early-ed-goals-210662#ixzz3oMe129iZ