Big Education Ape

Monday, March 1, 2010

Education Research Report

Study of four national English language arts standards

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A Systematic Comparison of the American Diploma Project College Readiness Standards with those of the ACT, College Board, and Standards For Success

This study of four national English language arts standards compares the content of three sets of standards with a benchmark set, the American Diploma Project (ADP), to see how closely the sets agree on what students should know in English language arts to prepare for college. The match between each of the three comparison sets and the 62 content statements in the ADP benchmark varies, from 77 percent of the statements for the College Board College Readiness Standards and 68 percent for Standards for Success to 34 percent for the ACT College Readiness Standards. But only 5 percent of the ADP statements fully match the content in all three comparison sets-27 percent when partial matching is also considered.
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Friday, February 26, 2010

Report Calls For Greater Federal Responsiveness To Needs Of Rural High Schools

Despite rural high schools often being shortchanged by current federal education policies, a new report from the Alliance for Excellent Educationfinds that rural schools routinely use practices that could be useful to boosting student performance in their urban and suburban counterparts.

According to the report, Current Challenges and Opportunities in Preparing Rural High School Students for Success in College and Careers, the tight-knit nature of rural communities has resulted in the development of promising practices in meeting the challenge of preparing students for success in the twenty-first century. For example, in the highly personal rural environment, at-risk students are not as likely to be overlooked. Additionally, successful rural high schools have utilized online courses and other distance learning to expand advanced learning opportunities for their students. By using local businesses as “place-based” learning opportunities, schools engage students’ interests, which often creates a college- and career-ready culture.

voiceofsandiego.org | News. Investigation. Analysis. Conversation. Intelligence. - A School Where You Shouldn't Raise Your Hand

By EMILY ALPERT

Before she began the lesson, Kerry Ferguson reminded her kindergarteners not to bother each other, not to interrupt -- and not to raise their hands before speaking. Some timid, some eager, the tiny students offered up their ideas about a story in which the mouse saves a lion by chewing through a net.

"Why was the little mouse so scared, terrified and afraid of the lion when they first met?" Ferguson asked them.

"The little mouse was too little and the lion was big," one girl said.

"Because mice are afraid of cats," another girl added. "Like house cats will chase a mouse."

It might seem strange to ask squirming kids toavoid raising their hands. But it is crucial to what Muir is trying to do. On the other end of campus, Chet Hancock actually nudged one raised hand aside. His class of middle and high schoolers was poring over a dense text by Ralph Waldo Emerson about manual labor laden with words like "antagonism" and sharing ideas.

Muir has changed the way it looks at learning. It pulled teachers out of the limelight. It let kids drive the discussions. And it focused on individualized projects that pull from different subjects, such as having students study their personal heroes and making websites about them.

Three years ago, the K-12 magnet school in Clairemont turned to an educational philosophy called Paideia, a relatively rare approach that emphasizes freewheeling seminars, personalized projects and critical thinking. Lectures are frowned on. Nobody has the one right answer. Muir's immediate goal was to get students more engaged in class, but the method has a broader aim -- to teach kids to think, read and write critically all their lives.

Small discussions break out all the time at Muir, a public school where middle schoolers ponder why to do math or high schoolers analyze Surrealist paintings. The whole school also sits dow

Privatization of California Continues Apace | California Progress Report

By Robert Cruickshan

Privatization is typically a very costly and wasteful way to deal with public services. Usually it is little more than a transfer of public wealth to well-connected people in the private sector, done in spite of the fact that that it's usually unnecessary and forces the public to spend more money than they would have before the privatization.

That scenario is likely to repeat itself in the upcoming privatization of 11 state office buildings:

California has put up the "for sale" sign on 11 state office buildings, including the San Francisco Civic Center and Ronald Reagan building in Los Angeles.

Real estate firm CB Richard Ellis began marketing the buildings Friday on behalf of the state.

Vice chairman Kevin Shannon says the firm is pitching the sale worldwide as a low-risk investment because the state is planning to lease the space back, giving the new owners a steady stream of income.

The sale was adopted as part of last year's budget agreement between Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and lawmakers to raise money for the state. California is facing a $20 billion shortfall through the middle of next year.

The sale is expected raise more than $2 billion.

Read that again. The sale is pitched as "low risk" because you and I will give the new owners a steady stream of income. We're going to rent these buildings indefinitely, ultimately at much greater cost than $2 billion.

Public ownership of office buildings is a much cheaper way to operate government. We pay back the construction loan and the ongoing maintenance, and that's usually more affordable than leasing from a landlord who seeks profit in the arrangement. The costs come out of our pockets, especially if we're cutting other services down the road to pay the privatization cost.

California: the golden state of special interests | California Progress Report

By Peter Schrag

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger likes to complain about the pernicious influence of “the special interests” (almost always with the definite article). If you parse the context carefully, he seems mostly to mean public employee unions – the teachers, the prison guards, maybe the nurses and firefighters who’ve beaten him in some costly ballot fights and wag a lot of tails in the legislature.

But of course, the special interests are not just the public sector unions. It’s hardly a secret that they also include a long list of other people and groups some of whom are among the governor’s best friends and biggest backers.

Among them: energy companies and utilities, banks, insurance interests, home builders and the real estate developers, the medical industry, retailers, the liquor industry, big agriculture, Silicon Valley, the movie industry, builders and contractors and hundreds of professional, trade and commercial associations, the political parties, and the Chamber of Commerce, all advocating for their programs and budgets and/or against regulation of their activities.

Put them all together and, one way or another, they represent almost everybody in the state several times over. Yet even including them all, the governor would still be only half right. “Special interests” aren’t the largest cause of the state’s problems.

What’s missing in this picture is the public interest. In California, particularly, who speaks for the public interest? How many Californians these days are even aware that there is – or should be – such a thing? At least since the passage of Proposition 13 in 1978, Californians – and most other Americans as well – have become increasingly wedded to a market ideology rather than the communitarian ethic generated in World War II that continued to drive the state through the generation following.

Madison believed that in checking one another, no “faction” would ever become dominant. But as we’ve also learned in California, the mutual checking often means that while no one prevails, nothing gets done.

Teacher unions challenged in unprecedented face-off | Rhode Island news | projo.com | The Providence Journal

Teacher unions challenged in unprecedented face-off | Rhode Island news | projo.com | The Providence Journal

Teacher unions challenged in unprecedented face-off

01:00 AM EST on Sunday, February 28, 2010

By Jennifer D. Jordan

Journal Staff Writer

State Education Commissioner Deborah A. Gist, who approved the firing of teachers, support staff and administrators at Central Falls High School, has said she will “do whatever it takes to create better schools.”

The Providence Journal / Steve Szydlowski

Eight months ago, Deborah A. Gist began her first staff meeting at the state Department of Education with a call to arms: “Are you ready to change the world?”

The woman who once climbed Mount Kilimanjaro made it clear that she would bring the same resolve to her job as the state’s new commissioner of education.

“Our state’s 150,000 public school students are depending on all of us to do whatever it takes to create better schools,” Gist said in her first speech.

Her urgency to fulfill this promise places Gist — even more than Supt. Frances Gallo — at the center of the turmoil now playing out in Central Falls.

New software multiplies computers in schools

New software multiplies computers in schools:

"Often still requires a trip to the computer lab or competing for a couple of tired machines in the back of a classroom.

But Microsoft and a handful of hardware partners are trying to seed schools with many more computing stations by getting single computers to power many more terminals.

The concept, called shared resources computing, involves having a handful of stations draw their processing power from one traditional desktop PC, connecting through simple USB wires to form one shared network.

Microsoft released a new operating system last week called MultiPoint Server 2010 that is designed for easy installation in schools looking to expand access to their computers. The software can deliver a Windows 7 desktop experience to up to 10 other terminals, also called thin clients. Additional software applications can be accessed from the host PC, although some may require"

Obama Touts School Improvement Plans - Politics K-12 - Education Week

Obama Touts School Improvement Plans - Politics K-12 - Education Week:

"Even though this Associated Press story makes it sound like President Obama is making big news today with a school improvement plan, it's really old news.

According to the story, he's using an America's Promise Alliance education event to tout the four turnaround models that are tied to acceptance of the Title I School Improvement Grants. We've written about this endlessly.

And his news peg is that he now wants to devote some $900 million to it; again, we've already covered this, courtesy of EdWeek's Alyson Klein, as part of our budget coverage."

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

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

As rises Russia, so do Russian language classes

Post-Cold War ebb has reversed itself as students see opportunity

MORE ON EDUCATION

Teacher Michelle Quackenbush works Lev Axelrod of Bethesda's Walt Whitman High School in Bethesda. (Juana Arias for The Washington Post)

For seniors, March is most anxious month

My guest is college admissions consultant Bruce Vinik, president of Vinik Educational Placement Services, Inc., in Cabin John, Md.

By Bruce Vinik
March is the only month that is longer than 31 days. It’s a fact. Ask almost any high school senior who has applied to college; he or she will tell you that March is the longest month of the year.
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As late winter turns into early spring, the anxiety level around the country is about to spike as 12th graders await news from colleges. This can be a difficult few weeks for students who want nothing more than to rip open those envelopes (or emails) to discover what the college gods have in store for them.

There was a time when April 1st was the obsessive focus of attention for high school seniors; this was the date when students rushed home from school to rifle through their mailboxes in search of those cherished thick envelopes. It was an American rite of passage.

Continue reading this post »

This Week In Education

News: Connecticut Contemplates RTTT Redo

Conn. lawmakers may beef up "Race to the Top" plan Associated Press: Connecticut lawmakers are considering ways to fortify the state's application for millions of dollars in education funding under the president's "Race to the Top" initiative, concerned the state won't receive funding in the first round.

In Middle School, Charting Their Course to College and Beyond NYT: In New Jersey and elsewhere, schools are experimenting with individualized learning plans that are intended to help students create career goals.

RI teachers weigh legal action over mass firings AP: A teachers' union is considering legal action after the entire staff of a long-troubled high school in Central Falls was fired.

District May End N.C. Economic Diversity Program NYT: At stake is the direction of a Raleigh suburb school system, the largest to consider income in placement.

Protests and Promises of Improvements at Schools NYT: Parents, reform organizations and others expressed concerns that the Chicago Public School district has embarked on yet another failed reform effort.

GOP challengers join Texas ed board battleground AP: Uproar over the evolution curriculum. Divides over religious influences in American history. A board member who called public schools a "subtly deceptive tool of perversion."

Schools Matter Much too much testing

Schools Matter

Much too much testing

Sent to the Hartford Courant, March 1, 2010

Why does testing take "a couple of weeks" in Connecticut? ("Educators pull out all the stops for good test scores," Feb. 28).

No competent professional teacher needs a standardized test, written by distant strangers, to see where their students are weak.

And if the goal of testing is to evaluate the system as a whole, we don't need to test every child every year; the doctor doesn't have to take all your blood to get an accurate picture of your health.

Stephen Krashen

Rise & Shine: New school will have 60 students to a class | GothamSchools

Rise & Shine: New school will have 60 students to a class

by Philissa Cramer

Attention-getting principal Shimon Waronker is opening a new school with 60 kids per class. (Post)
Chancellor Klein spoke to parents at a Harlem school fair organized by charter advocates. (NY1, Post)
Brooklyn’s High School for Public Service plans to grow and sell fresh produce. (Daily News)
Marcus Winters says a recent audit proves that city charter schools are more efficient. (Daily News)
The number of students taking private school admission tests dropped by 4.4 percent this year. (Post)
Parents in Chicago want assurance that new schools will be better than those they replaced. (Times)
The L.A. Times and Boston Globe offer detailed overviews of Diane Ravitch’s new book, out this week.
President Obama plans to push school turnarounds in a series of appearances this week. (AP)
Jay Mathews says many teachers actually like D.C.’s new teacher evaluations. (Washington Post)
A new trend is for sixth-graders to make personal education plans that go through high school. (Times)
A federal report finds that many states don’t regulate the use of seclusion in their schools. (AP)
North Carolina’s Wake County could soon end its vaunted socioeconomic integration program. (Times)

Diane Ravitch’s conversion The Educated Guess

The Educated Guess

Diane Ravitch’s conversion

Posted in Uncategorized

From neocon Irving Kristol to anti-communist crusader Whittaker Chambers, there’s been a history of true believers turned full-throated denouncers. Now, education has a celebrated convert, Diane Ravitch.
Before an approving audience of union teachers in San Jose on Saturday, the education historian , respected author and blogger (“Bridging Differences)denounced all of what she once believed in: pay for performance, the school accountability movement, standardized tests, public school choice.
The New York University education professor and fellow affiliated with the Hoover and Brookings institutions especially laid into her erstwhile allies: think tanks and foundations that are “demonizing unions, scape-goating teachers and undermining education.”
(Read more and comment on this post)

Martinez district, teachers wrangle over health benefits - San Jose Mercury News

MARTINEZ — For years, as health insurance rates skyrocketed, the Martinez school district has continued to pay the entire cost of family medical coverage for its teachers.

But with California still reeling from the recession and state leaders likely to cut education funding again this year, administrators say the district no longer can afford to pick up the tab for the annual rate increases.

In January, the district and the teachers' union began negotiating a contract that would expire in June 2012. Furlough days and larger classes are on the table. But it is the district's proposal that teachers pay for the additional cost of their health care from now on that has proved to be an obstacle to reaching an agreement.

"We're trying to come up with creative ways where the employees can pitch in and help to save their health benefits," said Rick Rubino, assistant superintendent. "We have never proposed taking away health benefits, we're just trying to find a way to pay for them."

This school year the district is dipping into its reserve fund to cover a $2.5 million budget shortfall, and it may have to cut $2.6 million from next year's budget if the Legislature adopts the proposals in Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's January budget.

Salaries and benefits make up about 90 percent of the district's $30 million budget. The district covers the entire cost of family medical coverage through Kaiser Permanente for full-time employees.

For 2010, the cost is $18,199 per employee, up 4.7 percent from last year, according to Rubino.

Martinez teachers union President Bob Holsinger said the teachers understand the district is in a tight spot, so they are willing to contribute monthly to their health insurance costs until the contract expires. But the union strongly opposes the district's proposal that the teachers pay for annual rate increases in perpetuity. The teachers believe the state's financial crisis is a short-term situation, so they want to make only temporary concessions.

"We have come in earnest to the table to say we know we need to give up things to make this happen," Holsinger

Schools chief's candor a welcome change in Antioch district - ContraCostaTimes.com

To keep Antioch schools focused on reading, writing and arithmetic, Donald Gill has been implementing his own set of the three R's: Relationships, relationships, relationships.

Since taking over last summer as the Antioch's superintendent, Gill, 58, has sought to be open and transparent in communicating issues facing the district — the same tack he's used during his nearly 40-year education career.

"It's always been in Don's personality to listen and try to understand instead of telling people what to do," said wife Phyllis Gill.

The San Diego native started as a custodian and bus driver before turning to teaching in the small town of Kernville, near Bakersfield. Stops along the way have included heading curriculum in Kern County; junior high principal and assistant superintendent in Bakersfield; working in the private sector with a San Diego charter school company; and junior high principal in Newark.

"He really finds joy in getting people to work well with him. People love to work with Don and work hard," Phyllis Gill said.

District can avoid mass teacher layoffs, official says - News - ReviewJournal.com

District can avoid mass teacher layoffs, official says - News - ReviewJournal.com:

"CARSON CITY -- THE CLARK COUNTY SCHOOL DISTRICT MIGHT BE ABLE TO AVOID MASS TEACHER LAYOFFS, EVEN WITH THE 6.9 PERCENT REDUCTION IN STATE SUPPORT THAT CAME OUT OF THE LEGISLATURE'S SPECIAL SESSION ON SUNDAY, AN ADMINISTRATOR SAID"

Joyce Haldeman, the district's associate superintendent of government relations, could not provide figures on potential teacher layoffs but said the number would not be many if teachers union officials would agree to salary reductions of 2 percent to 4 percent.

"We have talked about the need for a 'shared sacrifice,'" Haldeman said. "We could save many jobs if they do that."

The 6.9 percent state funding reduction to education agreed on by Gov. Jim Gibbons and the Legislature represents a loss of $117 million to the K-12 system and a loss of $46 million to higher education. The Clark County School District expects to receive about $90 million less in state funding through June 30, 2011.

"It is not pretty," Haldeman said. "But under the circumstances, I don't know what else they could have done."

Earlier in the special session, Clark County Superintendent Walt Rulffes warned that more than 2,300 district teachers faced layoffs if the 10 percent reduction in state support proposed by Gibbons was approved.

The position of the Nevada State Education Association, an umbrella organization for local teachers unions, has been that salary concessions must be bargained. The association wants to review all sources of school revenue to determine whether other funds could be used to avoid layoffs or pay cuts.

Haldeman said the district is looking at laying off 100 of its 1,340

Lawmakers looking favorably on cuts in education funding - baltimoresun.com

Lawmakers looking favorably on cuts in education funding - baltimoresun.com
For decades, Maryland lawmakers have built up public education through spending requirements that they've imposed on themselves and on local governments. But this year, more seriously than ever, the General Assembly is looking for ways to nip at school funding.

There's broad agreement among lawmakers that the depth and length of the national economic downturn means the time has come to review this previously untouchable part of the budget - which accounts for about 20 percent of state spending.

Del. John L. Bohanan Jr., a Democrat and chairman of the House of Delegates education budget subcommittee, said the economy has forced the General Assembly to consider changes to education funding that "12 months ago would never have even been up for discussion.

"Now we're looking at these drastic measures that may be needed to balance the budget," he said.

Monica Yant Kinney: Another pin in the privacy balloon | Philadelphia Inquirer | 02/28/2010

In the week since the Lower Merion School District "Webcamgate" saga went viral, many have focused on unanswered questions, angry denials, and salacious details about the accusing family. But let's not lose sight of the unassailable facts:
Lower Merion officials admitted using remote-access Web cam software 42 times this academic year, ostensibly to hunt missing laptops.
They admitted they had not sought parental permission to peer into minors' personal lives and homes.
And the district did not put a halt to the clandestine activity until it was sued by the family of Harriton High student Blake Robbins.
As Lillie Coney of the Electronic Privacy Information Center put it: "If they thought it was right, they wouldn't have stopped.
"But they weren't thinking. And they weren't planning to get caught. So they didn't tell anybody."
A fourth fact about this educational eye-opener? That it's yet another example of a troubling post-9/11 erosion of personal privacy.
Much of what we used to hold dear we now give away in exchange for convenience or store discounts. Other personal liberties are snatched from us in the never-ending war on terrorism.
But school district techies peering into private homes, even for a moment, under the guise of locating a lost laptop? Even in this "surveillance society

Teachers union accepts furlough days in proposed contract - SignOnSanDiego.com

SAN DIEGO — Nearly two years after its contract expired, the San Diego teachers union has reached a tentative settlement for a new labor pact with the San Diego Unified School District, officials announced yesterday.

Calling it a “monumental victory,” union officials said the contract calls for five furlough days in each of the next two school years. That amounts to a pay cut of roughly 2.74 percent and a savings of about $15 million to the district, said Camille Zombro, president of the San Diego Education Association.

District officials could not be reached for comment yesterday.

Under the proposed agreement, the district would restore salaries to its more than 8,000 part- and full-time teachers and raise pay by 7.16 percent during the 2012-13 school year.

“Protecting schools doesn’t have to mean hurting teachers. This will be painful, but it’s not a lose-your-house, can’t-pay-the mortgage cut,” Zombro said.

San Diego Unified has slashed $300 million from its budget since 2008 due in part to a reduction in state funding.

California’s second-largest school district faces an estimated $87.8 million deficit in next year’s $1.2 billion budget. Proposed pay cuts of up to 8 percent were rejected by the union before it agreed to trim the school year by five days with unpaid furloughs. The proposed contract also calls for an increase in medical co-payments from $5 to $10.

Under the contract, which must be ratified by the school board, the district would cancel the furloughs should its fiscal situation improve. Nursing and counseling staffing levels would also be protected from immediate cuts. Class sizes would be

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