Next UNC president is study in contradictions | News & Observer

Next UNC president is study in contradictions | News & Observer:

Next UNC president is study in contradictions

Margaret Spellings apparently wasn’t angered years ago when a Texas teachers group referred to her as the “princess of darkness.” Instead, she got herself a black cape with the moniker stitched on the back.

Spellings, who’s leaving the George W. Bush Presidential Center to become the president of the University of North Carolina system, once told a Washington Post reporter that she didn’t like the limelight. But in one of her first acts as Bush’s education secretary, she touched off a culture war skirmish when she denounced PBS for spending money on an episode of the animated children’s show “Postcards from Buster” that included lesbian characters. Gay rights activists pounced, and Rep. Barney Frank fired off a letter calling out Spellings’ “meanness.”

Conservatives didn’t like it, though, when Spellings responded “So what?” to a question about the decline of traditional two-parent families. There are all types of families, argued Spellings, who at the time was the divorced mother of two young children who had moved to Washington to work in the West Wing.

Spellings’ blunt words are softened by a Texas drawl. She doesn’t mind ruffling the feathers of the education establishment when she talks about productivity and accountability. She is insistent about the need for schools and colleges to serve more and better serve low-income and minority students.

“She brings out strong feelings. She is a bundle of contradictions,” said Andy Rotherham, a former policy adviser in Bill Clinton’s administration, who describes himself as “a Margaret fan.”

“She is this big, bold woman from Texas, but she has a heart of gold,” said Rotherham, co-founder of Bellwether Education Partners, a Boston area education nonprofit. “She is someone who cares and believes deeply in public education ... but she also believes public education needs to do much better.”

Spellings has spent her career in education policy and didn’t mind a little hard knuckle politics along the way. Karl Rove first brought her in to advise Bush on education when he ran for governor of Texas, after she had worked in the Texas legislature and the state school boards association. From then on, she would be in Bush’s inner circle, becoming domestic policy adviser in his first term and as education secretary in the second term. She’s now head of Bush’s presidential library and institute in Dallas.

Michael Petrilli, president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, said Spellings navigates the world of politics without ever talking like a politician.

“She comes off as very down to earth,” Petrilli said. “She’s tough. She’s a tough cookie, and she likes that reputation of being a tough cookie.”

I’M ASSUMING THAT (THE GOVERNORS) AT UNC KNOW THAT THEY’RE HIRING A CHANGE AGENT.

Michael Petrilli, president of Thomas B. Fordham Institute

Spellings, he said, is a big believer that the higher education system needed more accountability, that it had become complacent and that its outcomes weren’t as good as they could be.

“I’m assuming that (the governors) at UNC know that they’re hiring a change agent,” he said.

Envisioning a data revolution

Last year, Spellings wrote an op-ed piece for the Wall Street Journal in which she described what education would look like in 20 years.

Students and parents will be empowered by the data revolution, able to choose education in an a la carte fashion without regard to geographic or institutional boundaries, she wrote. Students will move at their own pace and individualize their education based on the outcomeNext UNC president is study in contradictions | News & Observer:

Margaret Spellings speaks after she was elected president of the University of North Carolina system during a meeting of the UNC Board of Governors at the Spangler Center in Chapel Hill, N.C., Friday, Oct 23, 2015. Ethan Hyman ehyman@newsobserver.com

How robots, artificial intelligence, and machine learning will affect employment and public policy | Brookings Institution

How robots, artificial intelligence, and machine learning will affect employment and public policy | Brookings Institution:

How robots, artificial intelligence, and machine learning will affect employment and public policy

Emerging technologies like industrial robots, artificial intelligence, and machine learning are advancing at a rapid pace, but there has been little attention to their impact on employment and public policy. Darrell West addresses this topic in a new paper titled What Happens If Robots Take the Jobs? The Impact of Emerging Technologies on Employment and Public Policy. It examines what happens if robots end up taking jobs from humans and how this will affect public policy.

While emerging technologies can improve the speed, quality, and cost of available goods and services, they may also displace large numbers of workers.  This possibility challenges the traditional benefits model of tying health care and retirement savings to jobs.  In an economy that employs dramatically fewer workers, we need to think about how to deliver benefits to displaced workers. 

The impacts of automation technologies are already being felt throughout the economy. The worldwide number of industrial robots has increased rapidly over the past few years.  The falling prices of robots, which can operate all day without interruption, make them cost-competitive with human workers.  In the service sector, computer algorithms can execute stock trades in a fraction of a second, much faster than any human.  As these technologies become cheaper, more capable, and more widespread, they will find even more applications in an economy.

The recent trend towards increased automation stems in part from the Great Recession, which forced many businesses to operate with fewer workers. After growth resumed, many businesses continued automating their operations rather than hiring additional workers. This echoes a trend among technology companies that receive massive valuations with relatively few workers.  For example, in 2014 Google was valued at $370 billion with only 55,000 employees, a tenth the size of AT&T’s workforce in the 1960s.

“There needs to be ways for people to live fulfilling lives even if society needs relatively few workers.”

Experts disagree on the size of the impact that automation technologies will have on the workforce.  While some warn of staggering unemployment, others point out that technology may create new job categories that will employ displaced workers. A third group argues that the computers will have little effect on employment in the future.  Any policy measures that address the future of employment must account for the uncertainty of outcomes on employment.

If automation technologies like robots and artificial intelligence make jobs less secure in the future, there needs to be a way to deliver benefits outside of employment.  “Flexicurity,” or flexible security, is one idea for providing healthcare, education, and housing assistance How robots, artificial intelligence, and machine learning will affect employment and public policy | Brookings Institution:

Folsom Cordova Unified School District PIOs: Critical link between schools, community - SI&A Cabinet Report

District PIOs: Critical link between schools, community :: SI&A Cabinet Report :: The Essential Resource for Superintendents and the Cabinet:

District PIOs: Critical link between schools, community

(Calif.) One hand drags a cursor across a computer screen as the other flips through a pile of papers on his desk. Simultaneously, Dan Thigpen, public information officer for Folsom Cordova Unified School District, rattles off the day’s itinerary from memory.

“What a typical day looks like fluctuates between working proactively and reactively,” said Thigpen, also president of the California School Public Relations Association.

“Proactive work includes strategic planning for ongoing, short-, medium- and long-term initiatives,” he explained. “The reactive side is communicating in an emergency and responding to media calls.”

Typically relegated to a behind-the-scenes role, a district communication officer serves an important position in bridging public schools with the community they serve. Few other public institutions enjoy as much public trust and responsibility as the school district, and thus, the job of communicating what happens on the campus – both routine and extraordinary – is complex and demanding.

Not every district has the benefit of hiring a communications specialist to fill this role. Just as the number of school nurses, librarians and counselors were cut during the recession, so too were many PIO jobs – only some of which have been restored.

A common misconception revolves around the idea that a school communications person simply fields media calls, but according to Thigpen, that is only a portion of his job description. At its core, the purpose of a public information officer is to take the complex inner workings of a district, simplify them, and tailor a message to different audiences.

A look at his schedule one morning included an early meeting with the director of Categorical Programs and Grants; then a phone call with an Internet sales representative; followed by a meeting with Comcast after lunch; a session with members of the local Chamber of Commerce; and then a chance to pitch a story idea to the local morning TV show, Good Day Sacramento. All of this comes while also handling a number of smaller tasks in between.

The PIO needs to have some knowledge of every department, the work they do and the acronyms they use, he said.

Thigpen’s first meeting of the day, for instance, was with Elena Cabrera, director of Categorical Programs, who wanted to discuss how best to persuade families who would likely be approved for free and reduced price lunch to sign up.

At issue is a dichotomy between the number of lower-income families on the Rancho Cordova side of the district that apply for free and reduced price lunch, and those on the Folsom side who may be District PIOs: Critical link between schools, community :: SI&A Cabinet Report :: The Essential Resource for Superintendents and the Cabinet:

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: WEEKEND QUOTABLES:

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Comey is "confused"

FBI Director James Comey

 “To speak of mass incarceration, I believe, is confusing and can obscure reality.” -- Sun-Times

Pres. Obama

"Learning is about so much more than just filling in the right bubble. So we're going to work with states, school districts, teachers, and parents to make sure that we're not obsessing about testing." -- Fox News

Arnie Duncan

“It’s important that we’re all honest with ourselves. At the federal, state and local level, we have all supported policies that have Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: WEEKEND QUOTABLES:

DIANE RAVITCH: Our real charter school nightmare: The new war on public schools and teachers - Salon.com

Our real charter school nightmare: The new war on public schools and teachers - Salon.com:

Our real charter school nightmare: The new war on public schools and teachers

Our kids deserve strong schools and great teachers under local control. That's what the charter fight is all about

Peter Cunningham, who previously served as Arne Duncan’s assistant secretary for communications, is a very charming fellow. When he left the administration, he returned to Chicago. The Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation invited him to start a blog defending “reformers” who advocate for charter schools, high-stakes testing, teacher evaluation based on student test scores, and the rest of the Race to the Top agenda. The blog, called “Education Post,” received $12 million from several billionaires, including the Broad Foundation, the Michael R. Bloomberg Foundation, the Walton Family Foundation, and an anonymous donor.

Peter just wrote a column that puzzled me. It appeared on Huffington Post. He says that teachers’ unions should embrace “reform” if they want public education to survive. I was puzzled because the major thrust of “reform” as currently defined is to privatize as many schools as possible and to eliminate teachers’ unions.

He writes:

“America’s teachers unions probably will not put reform leaders like Newark’s Chris Cerf, Philadelphia’s William Hite, D.C’s Kaya Henderson, or Denver’s Tom Boasberg at the top of their Christmas card mailing list. But they should, because no one is working harder to improve and preserve traditional, unionized, district-run schools.

“Yes, these and other reform superintendents support creating new, high-quality schools, including public charters, and giving all parents the power to choose the right schools for their children. But they and their leadership teams are most deeply committed to investing in and strengthening the existing district-run schools. No one wants these schools to work for kids more than these district leaders.”

Cunningham attributes opposition to charters solely to unions trying to protect their membership and their revenue. Why should unions feel threatened by privately managed charters? As Cunningham notes, 93% of charters are non-union. Cunningham thinks that everyone who opposes turning public tax revenues over to private operators has the sinister motive of protecting the unions. He even says that pro-public education bloggers are merely union fronts. Whether they are teachers, academics, or journalists, Cunningham can’t see any reason for them to question charters other than their allegiance to the unions. Unlike those who post on Cunningham’s “Education Post,” pro-public education bloggers are not paid for expressing their views.

Cunningham writes:

“Charter critics claim that charters pull resources and higher achieving students away from traditional public schools, but, in a poll conducted by Education Post, 65 percent of parents rejected this argument. Instead, they agreed that public charters offer high quality options to parents who have been traditionally denied the power of school choice.

“Teacher unions, who need unionized teachers and dues in order to exist, are fighting desperately to convince parents to stay with the traditional, district-run 

Our real charter school nightmare: The new war on public schools and teachers - Salon.com:

Bill lets retirees teach, get pension due to lack of subs

Bill lets retirees teach, get pension due to lack of subs:

Bill lets retirees teach, get pension due to lack of subs

Lansing — Michigan lawmakers are under pressure to let retired teachers return to the classroom because of a shortage of substitutes and not enough full-time teachers in special education, pre-kindergarten and certain subjects.

A 2012 law allowing teachers who retired after mid-2010 to teach again without losing their pension expired more than 15 months ago. That left provisions of a 2010 teacher retirement incentive law on the books.

Pension and health care benefits must be suspended once retirees directly employed by a school district are paid more than one-third of their average final compensation in a year. Retirement benefits are off limits entirely for retirees hired by an independent contractor to perform a school’s “core services.”

Reasons for the substitute teaching shortage are varied, including an improved unemployment rate that has meant job seekers who might have taken a part-time job substitute teaching landed full-time positions in education or another field. But school administrators and the companies they contract with for substitutes say legislators also are at fault.

“The Legislature disallowed retirees to come back who were deemed our best substitutes,” said Clark Galloway, president of EDUStaff, which finds substitutes for more than 300 of the state’s 541 districts. The firm, which recruits, screens, hires, trains, places and pays substitutes, is doing everything “within reason” to search for candidates, he said.

That includes job fairs, highway billboard advertising, yard signs and placements with newspapers, radio stations and on music streaming service Pandora.

One in 10 Michigan classrooms has a substitute teacher on average, more on Mondays and Fridays. A 95 percent fill rate was considered good up until a few years ago. The current fill rate is 85 percent, Galloway said, which means “we now have 1,500 classrooms on a daily basis that are not getting a substitute teacher or districts are scrambling.”

Rep. Holly Hughes, R-Montague, who sponsored the 2012 legislation allowing for exemptions, is spearheading a bill to re-enact the expired provisions. She said retired teachers were snared in lawmakers’ crackdown on superintendents making six figures who “double dipped” by retiring, collecting a pension and being rehired by an outside Bill lets retirees teach, get pension due to lack of subs:

And now Luke Bronin is collecting big bucks from developers of the Hartford Dunkin’ Donuts Stadium - Wait What?

And now Luke Bronin is collecting big bucks from developers of the Hartford Dunkin’ Donuts Stadium - Wait What?:

And now Luke Bronin is collecting big bucks from developers of the Hartford Dunkin’ Donuts Stadium

In the weeks leading up to Hartford’s Democratic Mayoral Primary, Greenwich native and political newcomer Luke Bronin repeatedly attacked incumbent Mayor Pedro Segarra for his support of the minor league baseball stadium that is now under construction in Hartford.

Luke Bronin told the Hartford Courant,

“I had real concerns about it. I still have real concerns about it and our ability to fund it.”

But despite Bronin’s “real concerns” about the stadium, the moment Luke Bronin got past the deadline for making his campaign contributions public prior to Primary Day he started loading up with money from the very developers who were given the extraordinary contract to build the stadium.

Connecticut State Law required that Bronin and any other candidate running for municipal office file a special campaign finance report exactly one week before the September 16, 2015 Primary Day.

However, although the filing date for the report was Wednesday, September 9, 2015, only contributions received by Monday, September 7, 2015 had to be listed on the report.

On Tuesday, September 8, 2015, only hours after a contribution reporting deadline had passed, Luke Bronin received eight $1,000 checks from individuals associated with the stadium developer.

And as Bronin’s latest campaign finance report reveals, the $8,000 collected on September 8, 2015 was only the beginning.

In the following days, the Bronin campaign pocketed additional $1,000 checks from the corporate executives of DONO Hartford LLC, CENTERPLAN DEVELOPMENT And now Luke Bronin is collecting big bucks from developers of the Hartford Dunkin’ Donuts Stadium - Wait What?:

Latina Style Magazine: Equality and Fairness For All - Lily's Blackboard

Latina Style Magazine: Equality and Fairness For All - Lily's Blackboard:

Latina Style Magazine: Equality and Fairness For All

Whenever I whined about my homework, mom would tell me that every piece of knowledge could be put to good use. She would say, “That’s a key. You never know when that key might open a door for you.” Some activists march. Others help us find the keys to open doors.

As the first Latina to head the National Education Association, for me, Hispanic Heritage Month is about paying tribute to the many people who opened doors for us. It’s also about acknowledging that today, we must keep pushing, pulling, and even kicking down those doors so that all young people can walk through them. And that means ensuring that all our kids – no matter where they live – have access to the best public education possible.Latina Style Magazine: Equality and Fairness For All - Lily's Blackboard:

Former elementary school principal reveals why she'd never want her daughter to go into teaching - Yahoo Finance

Former elementary school principal reveals why she'd never want her daughter to go into teaching - Yahoo Finance:

Former elementary school principal reveals why she'd never want her daughter to go into teaching

After spending nearly two decades as a teacher and school administrator, you might expect Kristi Rangle to enthusiastically praise the teaching profession.

She did the opposite, however, in a powerful blog post on The Urban Edge, where she largely disparaged the current state of teaching and explained the reason why she advises her daughter, currently pursuing an education degree, not to go through with it.

"I fear she – like many other teachers – will be scapegoated as the reason public education is failing," Rangle wrote.

She laid out the systemic reasons for the failure of public education, asserting that the quality of teachers, while touted as the most important factor of student success, is not the real problem.

"We have created schools that are functioning well below their capacity because of a lack of funds," Rangle explained. She spoke about the need for adequate funding, especially for teachers who work with disadvantaged populations of students.

The lack of funding sets teachers, and students, up for failure, according to Rangle. She argued that teachers these days are required to pick up more responsibilities that traditionally fell upon other faculty members, like school counselors and social workers.

Though Rangle's piece focuses on her experience teaching in the Texas school system, her argument could apply to many school systems in the US.

More than half of states are providing less per-pupil K-12 funding for kindergarten through 12th grade than they did in 2008 during the financial crisis, the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities found last year. 

Funding is not the only problem, however. Rangle also fears that in today's system where teachers are evaluated based on student performance, good teachers who work with low-income populations have been set up for failure.

She's troubled by this trend, but says experienced teachers can't in good faith recommend that new teachers try to work in low-income school districts.

"New teachers, like my daughter, are urged by veteran educators not to begin their careers in the types of schools where we found our passion for students and learning – the sort of places that need eager, energetic teachers the most," Rangle wrote.

NOW WATCH: What a classroom looks like in 27 countries around the world

Former elementary school principal reveals why she'd never want her daughter to go into teaching - Yahoo Finance:

Why "5+5+5=15" is wrong under Common Core - Business Insider

Why "5+5+5=15" is wrong under Common Core - Business Insider:

Why "5+5+5=15" is wrong under Common Core

Here's a "repeated addition" Common Core problem that's taught in third grade in US schools:

Use the repeated-addition strategy to solve: 5x3

If you answer the question with "5+5+5=15," you would be wrong.

The correct answer is "3+3+3+3+3."

Mathematically, both are correct. But under Common Core, you're supposed to read "5x3" as "five groups of three." So "three groups of five" is wrong.

According to Common Core defenders, this method will be useful when students do more advanced math. This way of reading things, for instance, can be used when students learn matrices in multivariable calculus in high school.

But parents aren't happy about it.Why "5+5+5=15" is wrong under Common Core - Business Insider:

Obama encouraging limits on standardized student tests - Yahoo News

Obama encouraging limits on standardized student tests - Yahoo News:

Obama encouraging limits on standardized student tests

WASHINGTON (AP) — Addressing one of education's most divisive issues, President Barack Obama on Saturday called for capping standardized testing at 2 percent of classroom time and said the government shares responsibility for turning tests into the be-all and end-all of American schools.

Related Stories

1. Too Many Tests Take the Joy Out of Learning, Says Obama TakePart.com
2. Obama Wants To Limit Class Time Devoted To Standardized Tests Huffington Post
3. President Obama calls for reduction of standardized tests in educationMarketWatch
4. [$$] New Jersey Releases Latest Test Scores The Wall Street Journal

Students spend about 20 to 25 hours a school year taking standardized tests, according to a study of the nation's 66 largest school districts that was released Saturday by the Council of the Great City Schools. But it's not known how much class time students spend preparing for tests that became mandatory, starting in third grade, under the George W. Bush-era No Child Left Behind law and are a flashpoint in the debate over the Common Core academic standards.

"Learning is about so much more than just filling in the right bubble," Obama said in a video released on Facebook. "So we're going to work with states, school districts, teachers, and parents to make sure that we're not obsessing about testing."

To drive the point home, Obama and Education Secretary Arne Duncan plan an Oval Office meeting Monday with teachers and school officials working to reduce testing time.

And from the 2016 presidential campaign, Democratic contender Hillary Rodham Clinton embraced the principles laid out by Obama. "We should be ruthless in looking at tests and eliminating them if they do not actually help us move our kids forward," she said in a statement.

In all, between pre-K and 12th grade, students take about 112 standardized exams, according to the council report. It said testing amounts to 2.3 percent of classroom time for the average 8th-grader.

"How much constitutes too much time is really difficult to answer," said Michael Casserly, the council's executive director.

Obama cannot force states or districts to limit testing, which has drawn consternation from parents and teachers. But Obama directed the Education Department to make it easier for states to satisfy federal testing mandates and he urged states and districts to use factors beyond testing to assess student performance.

The Obama administration said it still supports standardized tests as a necessary assessment tool, and there are no signs they are going away soon.

Both the House and Senate versions of an update to No Child Left Behind would preserve annual reading and math exams, although the House version would diminish their significance in determining whether schools are up to par. The legislation is in limbo while House and Senate negotiators figure out how to reconcile the competing versions.

Administration officials said that in many cases, testing is redundant, poorly aligned with curriculum or simply overkill. They said the administration supports legislative proposals to cap testing time on a federal level, but wanted to offer states a model for how to cut down on testing absent congressional action.

"There's just a lot of testing going on, and it's not always terribly useful," Cecilia Munoz, the director of the White House's Domestic Policy Council, said in an interview. "In the worst case, it can sap the joy and fun out of the classroom for students and for teachers."

Casserly said his group found examples of testing redundancy that could be cut to create more instructional time. For example, some states and school districts were requiring both end-of-year tests and end-of-course tests in the same subjects in the same grade.

To ease the testing burden, the administration will provide states with guidance about how they can satisfy federal testing requirements in less time or in more creative ways, including federal waivers to No Child Left Behind that the Education Department readily has handed out. For example, some 8th-grade students who take high school-level coursework currently take both 8th-grade and high school assessments, but the administration will allow them to opt out of the 8th-grade tests.

The value of standardized tests taps into the national debate about the federal government's role in local schools; both political parties generally support scaling back Washington's reach.

Central to that debate is Common Core, a set of universal, college-ready academic standards in reading and math developed by state education officials. The federal government doesn't require Common Core, but the administration has backed it with money. About 12 million students last spring took tests based on the curriculum.

Teachers' unions have fought hard against one-size-fits-all tests for students being tied to their teachers' performance evaluations. Among parents with children in public schools, 63 percent were opposed to linking teacher evaluations to their students' test scores in a recent Gallup Poll.

Among other findings in the council report:

—The most tests were required in 8th and 10th grade; the fewest were in pre-K, kindergarten and 1st grade.

—Four in 10 districts report having to wait between two months and four months before getting state test results.

—Some pockets of the country had substantial numbers of students opting out of standardized tests. But the overall opt-out rate was usually less than 1 percent.

Obama encouraging limits on standardized student tests - Yahoo News:

Reach Josh Lederman on Twitter at http://twitter.com/joshledermanAP and Jennifer C. Kerr at http://twitter.com/jckerr9

Study: Students Burdened By Local, State and Federal Tests - US News

Study: Students Burdened By Local, State and Federal Tests - US News:

Students Stuck in Maze of Testing

Exams in just a sampling of districts were given more than 6,570 times last school year, a new study finds.

A landmark study of the country’s largest urban school districts shows students are caught in a dizzying web ​of federal, state and local tests, and nearly everybody in the education community is to blame.

“Everybody has had a hand in what our current testing system looks like,” said Michael Casserly, executive director of the Council of the Great City Schools, which represents 66 urban school districts and spent the last two years analyzing the number of tests those districts gave in the 2014-2015 school year.

“Lots of people I know have pointed fingers at each other, and we have concluded that they were all correct,” he said.

RELATED

Education Department Recommends Less Testing

On average, students in the school districts were required to take 112 tests from the time they entered pre-K through grade 12, though that number does not include optional tests or those required specifically by a school alone.

Overall, students sat for tests more than 6,570 times. Students in eighth grade spent the most time taking tests – approximately four days, or 2.3 percent of their school year.

The testing burden, the report found, was particularly high at the high school level, although much of that testing was optional and included, for example, college entry exams like the SAT or ACT.

“This report really represents an opportunity to recalibrate our assessments structure,” said Richard Carranza, superintendent of the San Francisco Unified School District. “It’s time to weed the garden.”

The report comes on the heels of guidance from the Department of Education that recommends states and school districts evaluate their current testing regimens and eliminate any exams deemed ineffective or duplicative – a move that was cheered by the two national teachers unions and Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton.

The federal government requires states to test students 17 times before graduation: annually in math and reading in grades 3 through 8, once in those subjects during high school, and then once in science during elementary, middle and high school.

But the No Child Left Behind Act, the current version of the federal K-12 law, is largely blamed for ushering in an era of high-stakes testing to the public education system. The accountability at the heart of the law required states to ensure a specific percentage of students was proficient in reading and math each year, and each year that percentage had to increase.

If states didn’t reach annual proficiency goals, they could be subject to a series of sanctions. And that type of accountability system resulted in states and school districts piling on their own tests to ensure Study: Students Burdened By Local, State and Federal Tests - US News:

A Teacher on Teaching: School Reformers Cry “Wolf!”

A Teacher on Teaching: School Reformers Cry “Wolf!”:
School Reformers Cry “Wolf!”

What’s wrong with America’s educators these days? Why don’t they believe school reformers when they say they have plans to “fix the schools?”

Maybe it’s because real educators want nothing more than to work, unimpeded, with actual children.

Maybe it’s because the reformers have cried, “Wolf!” once too often. Or twenty times too often.

Doubtless, millions of educators across the country could add examples to this kind of story. But I’ll start with Rod Paige, Secretary of Education under President George W. Bush. You may recall that while serving as superintendent of the Houston City Public Schools, Mr. Paige won acclaim for the “Houston Miracle.” On the strength of his walk-on-water powers, he followed Mr. Bush to Washington in 2001, where the Texas duo promised to duplicate miracles on a fifty-state stage.

Simply stated, Mr. Paige claimed to have reduced dropouts in many inner city high schools to zero.

Yep: zero!

It turned out later that the “Houston Miracle” was less miracle and more a matter cooking the books. One Houston high school, for example, managed to classify all 462 dropouts as “transfers.” Unfortunately, by the time everyone realized Mr. Paige couldn’t turn water into wine he was ensconced at the U. S. Department of Education.

On January 8, 2002, President Bush signed No Child Left Behind into law. Now it was the turn of A Teacher on Teaching: School Reformers Cry “Wolf!”:

Jersey Jazzman: Charter Schools, An Exchange: Part III

Jersey Jazzman: Charter Schools, An Exchange: Part III:

Charter Schools, An Exchange: Part III

Dmitri Mehlhorn and I continue our debate about charter schools below. In case you missed it, here's Part I by Dmitri, and here's my reply in Part II. I'll have my reply in Part IV up within a few days; stand by...

I also asked Dmitri to write a short bio of himself just for this series:

"Dmitri Mehlhorn is a Senior Fellow with the Progressive Policy Institute. He writes frequently about education, including his own time as a public school student and parent. He is a co-founder and Board Member of StudentsFirst, which lobbies opposite teachers' unions on policies regarding choice and data. He is also a seed investor; however, his firm Vidinovo refrains from K-12 investments to avoid conflict of interest."

* * *

Episode III: The Return of the Charters

Do charter schools help kids learn?

I believe yes, and Jersey Jazzman (Mark Weber) believes no. We mostly agree on the basic facts, and disagree about the conclusions. As Jazzman wrote to me: “Almost everything you say is factually correct; however … you arrive at conclusions that simply are not warranted.”

So what now? 

At this point, we need to review the burden of proof in education policy, and then we need to review the evidence.   

In education policy debates, who should decide? 

If Jazzman and I, as proxies for the broader policy debate, agree that charters deliver better results, but cannot agree on whether they are “better enough,” how should our impasse be resolved?

 Jazzman is refreshingly transparent: “the burden of proof remains on those who make an affirmative case for charter proliferation, and it always will.” This answer, while representative of reform skeptics, seems unmoored from the principles of American public education. 

Parents seek freedom to make choices for their kids. A recent poll of parents found that two

- See more at: http://jerseyjazzman.blogspot.com/2015/10/charter-schools-exchange-part-iii.html#sthash.fqCC7wyX.dpuf

Superintendents in Florida Say Tests Failed State’s Schools, not Vice Versa - The New York Times

Superintendents in Florida Say Tests Failed State’s Schools, not Vice Versa - The New York Times:

Superintendents in Florida Say Tests Failed State’s Schools, not Vice Versa

Alberto M. Carvalho, Miami-Dade County’s schools superintendent, said the test-based grades for schools could be a “scarlet letter.” Credit John Moore/Getty Images

MIAMI — When protests from parents and teachers erupted against the new Common Core tests here, Florida thought it had a solution: It dropped the tests.

But it abruptly switched sources for the exams, hoping the substitute would be more palatable.

Now, nearly six months after students finished taking their exams, Florida faces an even worse rebellion, led by the state’s 67 school superintendents. In speeches, letters to the editor and appeals to state officials, they are arguing that the tests were flawed — first, because they were developed for Utah schools and based on the curriculum taught there, and second, because of a string of disruptive technical glitches when they were rolled out here.

The superintendents are challenging the state’s plan to use the scores to give schools grades from A to F and to influence some teachers’ evaluations. Standing behind them are the Florida PTA, the state’s School Boards Association, teachers and administrators.

The scores have not been released because state officials have not yet set grading standards, but the dispute has already boiled over. Under a preliminary recommendation, little more than half of Florida’s schoolchildren would pass the new math and English exams in most grades. With some members of the Board of Education pushing for even tougher scoring, the grades could drop further.

“This is probably the most important issue facing all of us,” Alberto M. Carvalho, the Miami-Dade County schools superintendent, said at a recent school board meeting. “The fight is not over. But I can tell you the state seems pretty adamant in moving forward as quickly as possible, even in the face of incomplete, inadequate, possibly corrupted, invalid and unreliable data.”

Framing it as a battle over the future of accountability in schools, Mr. Carvalho added, “If there was ever a time to press the pause button, this is the time.”

The state has already suspended most direct penalties associated with the new tests. Students’ scores will not be used to hold them back a grade, and school grades will not be used to punish failing schools.

But superintendents and others are angry that the state plans to move forward with the school grades at all, and to use student scores as a factor in some teacher evaluations. School leaders want the scores to be used simply as a baseline to better measure learning gains in next year’s scores.

Other states have faced problems with new tests for the Common Core, the national guidelines for kindergarten through high school reading and math Superintendents in Florida Say Tests Failed State’s Schools, not Vice Versa - The New York Times:

Adaptive learning software is replacing textbooks and upending American education. Should we welcome it?

Adaptive learning software is replacing textbooks and upending American education. Should we welcome it?:

No More Pencils, No More Books

Artificially intelligent software is replacing the textbook—and reshaping American education.

Illustration by Natalie Matthews-Ramo

By Will Oremus

ighteen students file into a brightly lit classroom. Arrayed around its perimeter are 18 computers. The students take their seats, log in to their machines, and silently begin working. At a desk in the back, the instructor’s screen displays a series of spreadsheets and data visualizations to help her track each student’s progress in real time.

This isn’t a Vulcan finishing school or a scene from some Back to the Futuresequel. It’s Sheela Whelan’s pre-algebra class at Westchester Community College in Valhalla, New York.

The students in Whelan’s class are all using the same program, called ALEKS. But peek over their shoulders and you’ll see that each student is working on a different sort of problem. A young woman near the corner of the room is plugging her way through a basic linear equation. The young man to her left is trying to wrap his mind around a story problem involving fractions. Nearby, a more advanced student is simplifying equations that involve both variables and fractions.

At first glance, each student appears to be at a different point in the course. And that’s true, in one sense. But it’s more accurate to say that the course is literally different for each student.

Just a third of the way through the semester, a few of the most advanced students are nearly ready for the final exam. Others lag far behind. They’re all responsible for mastering the same concepts and skills. But the order in which they tackle them, and the pace at which they do so, is up to the artificially intelligent software that’s guiding them through the material and assessing their performance at every turn.

ALEKS starts everyone at the same point. But from the moment students begin to answer the practice questions that it automatically generates for them, ALEKS’ machine-learning algorithms are analyzing their responses to figure out which concepts they understand and which they don’t. A few wrong answers to a given type of question, and the program may prompt them to read some background materials, watch a short video lecture, or view some hints on what they might be doing wrong. But if they’re breezing through a set of questions on, say, linear inequalities, it may whisk them on to polynomials and factoring. Master that, and ALEKS will ask if they’re ready to take a test. Pass, and they’re on to exponents—unless they’d prefer to take a detour into a different topic, like data analysis and probability. So long as they’ve mastered the prerequisites, which topic comes next is up to them.Whelan, the instructor, does not lecture. What would be the point, when no two students are studying the same thing? Instead, she serves as a sort of roving tutor, moving from one student to the next as they call on her for help. A teaching assistant is also on call to help those who get stuck or to verify that they’re ready to take their next test. As the students work, the software logs everything from which questions they get right and wrong to the amount of time they spend on each one. When Whelan’s online dashboard tells her that several are struggling with the same concept, she’ll assemble those students and work through some problems as a small group. It’s teaching as triage.

The result is a classroom experience starkly different from the model that hasAdaptive learning software is replacing textbooks and upending American education. Should we welcome it?: