The Educated Reporter And you mean what?

The Educated Reporter

And you mean what?There is so much rhetorical sloppiness swirling around NCLB right now, it is impossible to know what anyone is talking about. Duncan complains that the current law is too prescriptive, but comments indicate new approaches that are even moreso. He calls 100 percent proficiency a utopian goal but wants to replace it with what he says is a higher bar: career and college readiness. How to judge that students are college-ready if not by giving them a test and seeing if 100 percent pass it? You’re awarded money if you make progress, and money if you’re failing. Joanne Jacobs sums some of it up.

What I take out of all the pieces written in the last week is that—aside from a growth model, which we all knew was coming—we really have no idea what 

A new teacher, a new strength | The Education Report

A new teacher, a new strength | The Education Report

A new teacher, a new strength

By dadiletta
Thursday, February 4th, 2010 at 8:02 am in Dan Adiletta, middle schools.

As I get closer to my colleagues in my school, my district and in my department, I’m finding tremendous strength. I went to my professional development on Monday beleaguered—still with a box full of papers to grade. I’m stressed about my school closing, my shaky financial situation and how to manage my troubled students while increasing the academic rigor.

I’m not the only one. In fact, I found myself in a room heavy with worn faces. In that shared burden there was camaraderie, albeit in an exhausted form.

There’s a bond, too, among the history teachers. We met today to score the essays from the district assessment. This was an in-depth project that challenged students to interpret primary sources and form an evidence-supported argument. It’s the product of a department with very few resources but a determination to measure and push for further gains. We talked about the most important elements of history and how to best have children connect to it. Add to that the shared classroom strategies and now I’m excited for work tomorrow to start rolling out the second semester line-up.

Within my school st

Ignoring violations, parents want to keep a charter school open | GothamSchools

Ignoring violations, parents want to keep a charter school open | GothamSchools:

"Parents and students at an East New York charter school are pleading with the Department of Education to keep their school open after an investigation found that the school had violated its charter and its principal was expelling high-needs students.

Charter schools are rarely closed in New York City, but when they are it can inspire as much anger and confusion as the shuttering of a traditional public school. At a hearing at East New York Preparatory on Wednesday night, about 100 parents filled the auditorium to ask questions of DOE officials and speak out against the school’s proposed closure. Its embattled principal Sheila Joseph might have broken a few rules, they said, but in a high-crime, high-poverty neighborhood, a seat in her school was the only way out.

“In this community there aren’t many options for these kids,” said Leon Smillie, the father of a second grader. “This is a good option.”"

Schools Matter: The Fast Track to Resegregation: Corporate Charter Schools

Schools Matter: The Fast Track to Resegregation: Corporate Charter Schools

Twenty years ago educators believed charter schools could be hothouses of pedagogical innovation outside the normal confines of public education. As with many other good ideas aimed at encouraging diversity of thought, corporate America appropriated the charter school movement as their own and even advertised louder about innovation and letting a thousand flowers bloom. By the end of the Bush reign, however, the charter movement had established a major beachhead with over 4000 schools in 40 states, mostly in urban America. And so by the time Duncan had been anointed by Eli Broad as Secretary, it was time to kill most of the thousand flowers and to scale up the penal pedagogy model based on total compliance that uses unlicensed and unqualified teachers to drill math and reading test prep in schools without libraries or real curriculums. Containment schools based on total compliance and psychological neutering that no parent in the leafy suburbs would dare send their children to.
According to Duncan, "This is not let a thousand flowers bloom. We only let the best of the best open schools. It should be a very rigorous, competitive process. The chance to educate our children is really a sacred obligation." Yet according to the only national 

Paper Chase: DPS board uses letter in defense | detnews.com | The Detroit News

Paper Chase: DPS board uses letter in defense | detnews.com | The Detroit News:

"A four-year-old letter from the state's treasury department to the district's first elected school board after a 1999-2005 state takeover. Current school board members say the letter proves the district's finances went downhill under the state takeover, and it's central to their argument that state oversight should be limited.
The chase

The letter, dated Jan. 10, 2006, shows the district went from a budget surplus to a $48.7 million deficit while under the state's watch. By 2005, the district's debts were refinanced into what amounted to a $216 million loan from the state, according to the letter.

The debate comes as Robert Bobb, the district's emergency financial manager, asks lawmakers to extend his reach to academics. School board members, however, are pleading with Lansing to rein in what some see as an expanded takeover."

Voters advise L.A. Unified on preferred campus takeovers - latimes.com

Voters advise L.A. Unified on preferred campus takeovers - latimes.com

Elections in Los Angeles schools Tuesday had no age restrictions, no citizenship requirements. Voters could cast ballots more than once if they had more than one child or if they dashed to another polling place.

Welcome to democracy and school reform -- L.A. Unified-style.

A new school board policy, approved in August, allowed groups from inside and outside the Los Angeles Unified School District to bid for control of 12 persistently low-performing campuses and 18 new ones. Parents, teachers, students -- and anyone else who desired -- voted for their favored plans to run the 30 campuses with close to 40,000 students.

The Board of Education will make the final decision for every school, but board members will review the results.

"This is our opportunity to hear directly from the people who will most be affected by the decisions that we . . . will make in just a few weeks," said board member Steve Zimmer, who pushed for the school elections.

Bidders for the campuses include teachers -- frequently working with administrators -- as well as charter-school organizations and other outside groups.

Charters -- which are independently operated and exempt from some rules, including union contracts -- mostly pursued the new campuses. They have argued that they can more effectively run them than the nation's second-largest school system.

CMS’s Clark gets training to be an 'urban superintendent' - CharlotteObserver.com

CMS’s Clark gets training to be an 'urban superintendent' - CharlotteObserver.com

Ann Clark, Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools’ chief academic officer, has been chosen for a 10-month executive training program designed to prepare her to be an urban superintendent.

Clark is one of 14 people nationwide tapped for the Broad Superintendents Academy, which counts CMS Superintendent Peter Gorman among its graduates. She won’t leave her job while attending weekend training sessions on education, finance and other leadership issues. After she completes the training, she’s expected to spend a year as a “cabinet-level” administrator in an urban district, which she’s already doing, Gorman said.

Eventually, he said, Clark could lead another district or could be in line to replace him.

The academy, created by philanthropist Eli Broad (it rhymes with “road”), targets leaders inside and outside education. Clark’s 2010 classmates include an Army general, the director of strategic planning for a technology corporation and the former chief of NATO Afghan operations.

Some teacher unions balk at federal program boosting aid to schools - The Boston Globe

Some teacher unions balk at federal program boosting aid to schools - The Boston Globe:

"Although many school districts in Massachusetts have rushed to take part in a federal program that offers new funds in exchange for cooperation on educational reforms, a number of others will have to sit on the sidelines because their teacher unions opted out."

The unions say participation in the program, Race to the Top, would have unfairly tied their jobs to student test scores.

School districts in Brockton, Marshfield, Plymouth, Randolph, and several other communities south of Boston are among the 256 statewide that can look forward to the prospect of funding for new educational services next year. With the federal program structured to give more money to school systems serving greater numbers of lower-income households, Brockton is eligible for an estimated $2.6 million, Plymouth for $440,000, Randolph for $315,000, and Marshfield for $182,000.

But school systems in Braintree, Dedham, Quincy, and Weymouth, among others, are excluded from the funds because they failed to gain union leaders’ signatures on their applications.

“I’m disappointed,’’ said Anne Mahoney, vice chairwoman of the Quincy School Committee and a parent of children in the Quincy schools. “Any opportunity we have to have funds coming in, we should take a good look at it.’’

Christie advisers call for tough new school rules | Philadelphia Inquirer | 02/04/2010

Christie advisers call for tough new school rules | Philadelphia Inquirer | 02/04/2010

In a call for change that has raised eyebrows within the New Jersey education community, Gov. Christie's transition advisers have recommended expanding the number of charter schools, re-evaluating hundreds of education regulations, and radically tightening eligibility for high-school students applying to the NJ STARS college-tuition program.



That's just a start. The education transition subcommittee, in a recent 25-page report, suggested that Christie think about stripping the state Board of Education of policy powers. Ditto for the state Council on Higher Education.


And in a move that snapped union members to attention, it floated the idea of tying teacher and principal raises to student performance and requiring teachers to work for five years, up from three, before they can get tenure.


What the naming of Bret Schundler, the political maverick and conservative school-choice champion, as state education commissioner strongly suggested, the subcommittee's recommendations solidified: The Christie administration plans a radical rethinking of the public education system.


"That's the point," said Christie spokesman Mike Drewniak.


The report - which is advisory, not indicative of definite policies the governor will pursue - has both delighted and concerned interested parties.
Much of it calls for further study. And to enact some changes, legislation would be required. That takes time.
"Overall, we think it's pretty good, and it's pretty tuned in to many of the educational needs of the local districts," said Lynne Strickland, executive director of the Garden State Coalition of Schools, which represents about 100 districts, many in South Jersey.


A number of her group's recommendations made it into the report, Strickland said, including reviewing regulations adopted over recent years, relaxing some paperwork requirements for high-performing schools, and taking a critical look at funded and unfunded education mandates.

Local News | State's entry idling at start line in Race to Top | Seattle Times Newspaper

Local News | State's entry idling at start line in Race to Top | Seattle Times Newspaper:

"A few weeks ago, 40 states and the District of Columbia jumped into the high-profile education competition known as Race to the Top, submitting applications up to 1,000 pages long to make their case for a share of $4.35 billion in federal prize money.

In Washington state, meanwhile, officials have yet to reach the starting line.

That doesn't mean Washington has no chance at a Race to the Top grant, which could bring anywhere from $150 million to $250 million to a state this size.

The competition will have at least two rounds, with winners in each one.

Washington officials are working on an application for Round 2, which starts in June. As a first step, Gov. Chris Gregoire has brokered bills, now before lawmakers, that would revamp teacher and principal evaluations, give the state power to intervene in failing schools and strengthen other policies aimed at helping Washington compete."

Other Phila. schools handle racial, ethnic tensions | Philadelphia Inquirer | 02/04/2010

Other Phila. schools handle racial, ethnic tensions | Philadelphia Inquirer | 02/04/2010:

"Trouble was brewing at Fels High School last school year: Asian students were jumped and beaten. Disabled students were assaulted.

'It was scary,' Eileen Coutts, then an assistant principal, said of the climate at Fels.

Worried that the unrest might escalate, Coutts invited members of community groups to the school. Administrators, parents, students, and activists came up with a list of interventions - class discussions, peer mediation, mentors, an 'international welcome squad,' cultural sensitivity training for staff, a buddy system for new students."

Legislature overrides veto by governor on teacher code of ethics | montgomeryadvertiser.com | Montgomery Advertiser

Legislature overrides veto by governor on teacher code of ethics | montgomeryadvertiser.com | Montgomery Advertiser

The Alabama Legislature on Tuesday overrode Gov. Bob Ri ley's veto and blocked a teacher code of ethics approved by the Alabama Board of Education from being placed into the state code.

The Legislature voted last month for a resolution blocking the ethics code. The governor vetoed that resolution.

The Senate voted last week 22-10 to override the governor's veto. The House voted 53-25 Tuesday to go along with the Senate and block it.

Supporters of the ethics code argued it was backed by many teachers and had been in effect for several years without any enforcement provision. Oppo nents said the code was too vague to make teachers subject to disciplinary action under it.

The vote fell mostly on parti san lines with Democrats oppos ing the code and Republicans supporting it.

Provisions in the code de fined unethical conduct as har assing colleagues, misusing tests, using inappropriate lan guage at school, and failing to provide appropriate supervi sion of students. It also says edu cators "should refrain from the use of alcohol and/or tobacco during the course of profession al practice and should never use illegal or unauthorized drugs."

The code was opposed by the Alabama Education Associa tion, which argued it would sub ject teachers to dismissal or oth er disciplinary procedures for violating vaguely worded items in the code.

Maryland makes huge strides in Advanced Placement - USATODAY.com

Maryland makes huge strides in Advanced Placement - USATODAY.com

If you had asked Nancy Grasmick five years ago how things were going with her big, splashy Advanced Placement campaign, she would have said: It's not pretty.

Maryland was expanding the elite program at a steady clip, pushing more and more high-schoolers into AP classes, with an aggressive marketing campaign that targeted rural and suburban kids as well as those in big, urban districts like Baltimore and Prince George's County.

AP TESTS: Failure rate climbing

But kids weren't doing so well.

While high schools were offering AP courses, Grasmick believes the day-to-day classwork didn't always demand much of students or match the rigor of the end-of-course tests.

"Teachers were saying they were teaching AP, but there was no fidelity in the curriculum," says Grasmick, Maryland's longtime, pugnacious state superintendent of schools. "Teachers were calling it AP — it wasn't AP. And then kids were taking the test and they weren't doing well — of course they weren't doing well."

Bucking the trend in South

Like virtually all of its neighboring Southern states, Maryland was coming up against reality: In its bid to rapidly expand AP, more kids were taking the classes — and more were failing, scoring a 1 or 2 on a five-point scale. Southern states, which include Maryland by U.S. Census Bureau definitions, now lead the nation in AP failure rates, with nearly half of all tests scoring a 1 or 2, according to a USA TODAY analysis. Nationwide, 41.5% of AP tests taken last year earned a failing score. In the South, it was 48.4%.

Bullied kids ‘helpless’ against attacks - BostonHerald.com

Bullied kids ‘helpless’ against attacks - BostonHerald.com

Hundreds of angry parents, worried teachers and even terrorized kids are reporting ugly episodes of brutal bullying at schools across Massachusetts as the heartwrenching case of Phoebe Prince continues to expose a painful nerve.
The abuse - detailed in e-mails and phone calls to the Herald - is emotionally jarring, often physical and spreading like a merciless virus in cyberspace.
Kids tell of being forced to drink toilet water, getting pummeled on the bus and seeing themselves ridiculed for all to see on Facebook.

It’s a toxic cauldron of abuse that callers fear could land their children in the same no-win corner as Prince, the South Hadley 15-year-old who apparently took her own life after being bullied.
And, in a constant refrain, they all say nobody in power cares.
“Nobody listens. It seems like you’re talking to the wall unless you have $1 million,” said a Cohasset dad who said his boy is picked on constantly. “Put that on the front page.”
In one of the more touching exchanges, a 10-year-old Malden boy called this week to say the bullying is becoming too much.
“Go ahead. Tell him,” his dad coaxed him on the phone.

Online Education Scholarships Help Parents Return to School - US News and World Report

Online Education Scholarships Help Parents Return to School - US News and World Report

For many parents who split their time between 40-hour workweeks and taking care of their kids, the idea of continuing their education seems almost impossible. An online learning site called eLearners.com has helped parents overcome the three main barriers to returning to school: time, money, and lack of confidence, says Helen MacDermott, content director for eLearners.com. The site launched Project Working Mom 2010, a program created to award up to 285 full-tuition scholarships from eight accredited online institutions worth about $5 million in total to working mothers and fathers. Project Working Mom 2010 is the fourth in a series of programs run by eLearners.com to "tackle the crisis of the undereducated adult population in America." 

Of parents ages 22 to 50, 19.6 percent of males and 20.4 percent of females had bachelor's degrees, according to 2009 data from the Census Bureau. (To view these or other tables of education data, visit the Current Population Survey Table Creator.) College degrees pay off in the long run: On average, adults with a bachelor's degree make $26,000 more annually than those with just a high school diploma, according to 2008 Census Bureau data. With tough economic times, more people are going back to school online to continue their education. More than 4.6 million students were taking at least one online course during the fall 2008 term, a 17 percent increase from 2007, according to a Sloan Survey of Online Learning report, "Learning on Demand: Online Education in the United States in 2009." 

[Read Study: Online Education Continues Its Meteoric Growth.] 

Letter to the Editor | Ask a teacher what works in education | courier-journal.com | The Courier-Journal

Letter to the Editor | Ask a teacher what works in education | courier-journal.com | The Courier-Journal:

"As an educator of 26 years, I am saddened by the recent legislation created by Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and supported by the President. The recent “Race to the Top” education grants create a competition (much like a basketball game) and award points for programs such as merit pay, charter schools and other programs that are detrimental to the success of students. This plan failed miserably in the Chicago Public Schools, of which Duncan was superintendent."

We know competition creates winners and losers. Do we want to encourage a system for education that promotes losers? Should teachers be held responsible for the test scores of students who were not in their classrooms for the first four or more years of their lives (kind of like being held accountable for the eight years of a previous administration) — students who may have been born addicted to drugs, abused and/or neglected, as well as a whole gamut of influences that affect learning that we have no control over?

Could I have influence over the test scores of a student who reported sexual abuse to me on the first day of CATS testing or those of the student who soils himself daily because of previous abuse? Should my merit as a teacher be based on this?

Isn't it sad to live in a country that rewards its athletes with million-/billion-dollar contracts but provides salaries to its teachers equal to the poverty level in many cases, forcing those teachers to take on second and summer jobs in order to provide for their families?

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

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

Problems with D.C. teacher evaluation

Marni Barron, an innovative educator, shares my discomfort with many Washington area school districts that rate nearly 100.percent of their teachers as satisfactory. (I’m not kidding: Alexandria says 99.percent, Fairfax County, 99.1.percent, Montgomery County, 95, Loudoun County, 99, Prince George’s County, 95.6, and so on.)

But we disagree over the region’s most daring effort to assess educators honestly, the D.C. schools’ IMPACT program. I think it is a worthy experiment. Barron thinks it needs to do much more than it is designed to do to train teachers in its intricacies and demands.

Barron, 38, has been teaching, or coaching teachers, for 15 years. She works with the IMPACT system daily as the instructional coach assigned to help 15 teachers achieve and maintain excellence at Phoebe Hearst Elementary School in Northwest Washington. I (age withheld) have never taught a day of school in my life, and know no more about IMPACT than what I have read and heard from teachers.
Which of us are you going to believe?

Continue reading this post »

Achievement gap among best and brightest

My guest today is Debra Viadero, who reports on education research for Education Week and writes a daily blog called Inside School Research.

By Debra Viadero
When it comes to achievement gaps between students of different racial, socioeconomic and gender groups, the good news in recent years has been that the distances between those groups seem to be narrowing. The bad news: Not so for everyone.

For the nation's best and brightest, a new report says, academic gaps between girls and boys, between white students and disadvantaged minority students, between poor students and their better-off peers, and between English-language learners and their English-speaking counterparts have only widened, stagnated, or declined by a hair since the late 1990s.

If present trends continue, the authors of this new report say, black 4th graders won't catch up to their white classmates on mathematics tests until 2107!

Continue reading this post »

DCPS feeling IMPACT?

The District has told the Education Department that it "can barely keep up" with the demands of Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee's ambitious new teacher evaluation system, called IMPACT. That's according to D.C's recently completed application for "Race to the Top," the Obama administration's multi-billion dollar grant competition to fund education reforms.

School officials have said they are pleased with IMPACT's rollout so far, although it has received mixed reviews from teachers and scorn from union leaders. Launched last fall at a cost of $4 million, IMPACT uses test scores and an elaborate new "teaching and learning framework" to assess educators on everything from how clearly they deliver information to their commitment to the school community.

Continue reading this post »

Study: Charter school growth accompanied by racial imbalance - washingtonpost.com

Study: Charter school growth accompanied by racial imbalance - washingtonpost.com

Seven out of 10 black charter school students are on campuses with extremely few white students, according to a new study of enrollment trends that shows the independent public schools are less racially diverse than their traditional counterparts.

The findings from the Civil Rights Project at UCLA, which are being released Thursday, reflect the proliferation of charter schools in the District of Columbia and other major cities with struggling school systems and high minority populations.
To the authors of the study, the findings point to a civil rights issue: "As the country continues moving steadily toward greater segregation and inequality of education for students of color in schools with lower achievement and graduation rates," the study concludes, "the rapid growth of charter schools has been expanding a sector that is even more segregated than the public schools."

D.C. effort to assess teachers falls short, educator says - washingtonpost.com

D.C. effort to assess teachers falls short, educator says - washingtonpost.com:

"Marni Barron, an innovative educator, shares my discomfort with many Washington area school districts that rate nearly 100 percent of their teachers as satisfactory. (I'm not kidding: Alexandria says 99 percent, Fairfax County, 99.1 percent, Montgomery County, 95, Loudoun County, 99, Prince George's County, 95.6, and so on.)

But we disagree over the region's most daring effort to assess educators honestly, the D.C. schools' IMPACT program. I think it is a worthy experiment. Barron thinks it needs to do much more than it is designed to do to train teachers in its intricacies and demands.

Barron, 38, has been teaching, or coaching teachers, for 15 years. She works with the IMPACT system daily as the instructional coach assigned to help 15 teachers achieve and maintain excellence at Phoebe Hearst Elementary School in Northwest Washington. I (age withheld) have never taught a day of school in my life, and know no more about IMPACT than what I have read and heard from teachers."

Study finds high school choice 'an illusion' | Philadelphia Inquirer | 02/04/2010

Study finds high school choice 'an illusion' | Philadelphia Inquirer | 02/04/2010:

"Despite offering a dramatically expanded menu of high school choices for students in recent years, most Philadelphia School District pupils still end up in the city's large and failing neighborhood high schools, according to a new study.

Because of scant information for students and a lack of seats in magnet and citywide lottery schools, 'high school choice is an illusion' for most, Eva Gold, the lead author of the study and a senior research fellow at Research for Action, a Philadelphia nonprofit that studies public education, said yesterday.

The selection process also burdens the neighborhood high schools, it said.

Disadvantaged students unfamiliar with the system are shortchanged, the study found. Most don't know, for instance, that principals at selective schools do accept students after the application period is closed.

'There is wiggle room in the system,' Gold said. 'Those that request late admission, that push hard, that have advocates that can advocate for them to get into a sch"