Wednesday, March 24, 2010

State wins latest legal fight over bilingual education system | Houston & Texas News | Chron.com - Houston Chronicle

State wins latest legal fight over bilingual education system

By GARY SCHARRER
Austin Bureau

March 23, 2010, 9:41PM

AUSTIN — A federal appeals court has ruled in favor of Texas in a lawsuit challenging the state's bilingual education system, but the court invited those who brought the suit to retry the case.

The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed a federal judge's ruling but called the performance of limited English proficient students in Texas “alarming” and ordered the lower court to determine the cause of poor student achievement and how best to fix the problem.

“The court of appeals didn't shut the door on us, but they put some heavy furniture in the way,” said David Hinojosa, a lawyer for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, one of the parties in the 2006 case, which was an offshoot of a suit first filed in 1970.

Limited English students perform much better in the early grades than they do in junior high and high school. Last year, for example, 75 percent of limited English proficient (LEP) students met all standards of the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills test, known as the TEKS. But only 13 percent of 10th-grade limited English students met all of the TEKS test standards — compared to 57 percent for all 10th-graders and 73 percent for white 10th-graders.

‘Failing all over Texas'

Last year, nearly 800,000 Texas public school students were classified as limited English proficient, about 17 percent of the entire 4.7 million enrollment.

The 5th Circuit threw out a ruling by the late U.S. District Judge William Wayne Justice, in part, because he did not establish that the Texas Education Agency had failed

Chicago Schools Chief, Now an Obama Aide, Had V.I.P. List for Top Choices - NYTimes.com

In Chicago, Obama Aide Had V.I.P. List for Schools

By TAMAR LEWIN and MONICA DAVEY

Published: March 23, 2010

REPRINTS

When Arne Duncan, the secretary of education, was chief executive of the Chicago Public Schools, his office kept a log of nearly 40 pages listing the local politicians and business people and others who sought help getting children into the city’s most selective public schools.

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Alex Wong/Getty Images

Arne Duncan once kept a list of people seeking top schools.

Times Topic: Arne Duncan

According to an article Tuesday in The Chicago Tribune, which first obtained and reported on the confidential log, those who sought such help included 25 aldermen, Mayor Richard M. Daley’s office, the State House speaker, the state attorney general, the former White House social secretary and a former United States senator.

A spokesman for the Department of Education said Tuesday that the log was a record of those who asked for help, and that neither Mr. Duncan nor the aide who maintained the list, David Pickens, ever pressured principals to accept a child. Rather, he said, the creation of the list was an effort to reduce pressure on principals.

“Arne Duncan asked David Pickens to respond to all of these requests, some of which came from him, some from lots of other people, as a way to try to manage a process that was putting a lot of pressure on principals,” said Peter Cunningham, who handled communications for Mr. Duncan in Chicago and is now assistant secretary of the

Judge orders state employees back to work - Sacramento Politics - California Politics | Sacramento Bee

Judge orders state employees back to work

By Jon Ortiz
jortiz@sacbee.com

Published: Wednesday, Mar. 24, 2010 - 11:31 am

Last Modified: Wednesday, Mar. 24, 2010 - 11:40 am

An Alameda County judge has ordered furloughed state employees in nearly 70 departments to return to a regular work schedule next month, but he spared the state from immediately paying hundreds of millions of dollars in back pay while Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger appeals the ruling.

Service Employees International Union Local 1000, the state's largest civil service union, figures Roesch's decision affects about 53,000 of its 95,000 members.

Judge Frank Roesch's decision this morning underscored his Dec. 31 ruling that Schwarzenegger should not have furloughed

On-time graduation rates still look grim | Philadelphia Public School Notebook

On-time graduation rates still look grim

by Paul Socolar on Mar 24 2010 Posted in Breaking news

The Notebook's upcoming April edition on the city's continuing dropout crisis will report a 56 percent on-time graduation rate for the class of 2009 (students who entered 9th grade for the first time in 2005). Disappointingly, that's down one point from the previous year.

But that citywide on-time graduation rate figure does not capture the vast differences in graduation rates among schools, with percentages at Masterman, CAPA, and GAMP in the high 90s, while South Philadelphia and Kensington Culinary have percentages in the 20s.

At 22 of the District's neighborhood high schools, less than half of what should have been the class of 2009 actually graduated by 2009.

The rates shown here are "cohort graduation rates for the class of 2009, with students attributed to the school where they started 9th grade in 2005.

School	Grad. rate
Masterman	99.1%
Creative And Performing Arts	95.5%

NCLB: Will Duncan Plan Address Teacher Inequities This Week In Education

This Week In Education

Ratings: The Upside Of "Persistently Low-Achieving"

"I thought T.C. Williams being tagged "persistently low achieving" was the lowest moment of my career... Now I see it more as an unfriendly wake-up call, something to pull us back from the long, slow slide of not serving all our students well." -- English teacher Patrick Welsh in the Washington Post

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March 24, 2010 | Posted At: 02:16 PM | Author: Alexander Russo | Category: NCLB News

NCLB: Will Duncan Plan Address Teacher Inequities?

All Matt Yglesias really wanted to do was to give a shout-out to a colleague at the Center on American Progress, but instead his post about teacher salaries generated heat and disdain from readers. The point he was trying to make -- an extremely worthwhile and too long ignored issue -- is that the Duncan blueprint proposes to address the long-vexing issue of teacher distribution within districts.

Before last night’s school board meeting, a termination ‘inquest’ | GothamSchools

Before last night’s school board meeting, a termination ‘inquest’

by Maura Walz

Among the contracts and school siting proposals on the agenda for last night’s school board meeting, one unusual item stood out — an “inquest on employee termination.”
The ominous-sounding phrase meant that before the public meeting, the board met in private to hear the case of a school employee whom the city wants to fire.
Under state education law, teachers and other pedagogical staff have 10 days after being charged with incompetence or misconduct to request a hearing. Teachers and principals who do not file a request for a hearing within that time waive their right to a hearing and the case goes before the board, known as the Panel for Educational Policy.
Department of Education officials would not comment on any details about the employee whose case was heard, nor would they confirm whether the person was a teacher, principal or other staff member.
During an inquest, a DOE attorney presents the city’s case to panel members, who come back with a final decision within a few weeks, said Claude Hersh, a lawyer with the state teachers union whose office handles

Education Research Report: Fixing No Child Left Behind

Fixing No Child Left Behind

By Gordon A. MacInnes

The federal government pays 90 percent of the bill for interstate highways, and even secessionist states such as Texas and South Carolina go along with its specifications for lane width, signage, and speed limits. Now, the Obama Administration seeks to greatly extend the reach of federal policy with an ante of just 7.5 percent or so of the annual bill for public education. The vehicle for this audacious play is the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Act (ESEA), formerly known as No Child Left Behind (NCLB).

The U.S. Department of Education's (USDE) "Blueprint for Reform of Education," which it released on the Ides of March, makes the case for a dramatic rewriting of national policy, including some worthwhile and needed changes to the present law.

First, it recognizes the hash that NCLB made of curricular standards and standardized testing. Essentially, most states set weak, numerous, vague, or too specific academic standards and then gamed the state tests to deceive the public about how well students were performing. USDE now proposes that states agree on a new set of clear, strong, and relatively fewer standards, followed by cooperatively developed assessments that go beyond multiple choice.

Second, the Blueprint replaces NCLB's ludicrous mandate of 100 percent proficiency by 2014 with a more complex system that emphasizes steady and significant progress by students, schools, and districts. It maintains the important attention to how specific subgroups of students perform,

http://epicpolicy.org/thinktank/review-Americas-Private-Public

Review of America's Private Public Schools

Thomas B. Fordham Institute

America's Private Public Schools

Author(s): Michael J. Petrilli and Janie Scull
Report Date: 02/18/2010
Report URL: http://edexcellence.net/doc/201002_PrivatePublicSchool_final.pdf

Full Text: Think Tank Review

Reviewer(s): Yun, John T. (University of California, Santa Barbara)

Review Date: 03/24/2010

A recent report from the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, America's Private Public Schools, has received considerable attention and includes some controversial recommendations. The report's authors suggest the existence of what they term "private public schools," and they argue that the existence of these "exclusive" public schools justifies the support of publicly funded vouchers to private schools. While the report's analysis does support the contention that there are public schools with extreme isolation by class, the authors inappropriately use this finding as the basis to argue that private schools should be publicly funded through vouchers or tax credits -- a conclusion with extremely tenuous logic and one that is unsupported by their analysis. Ultimately, this report has some utility in providing a point of departure for discussions about how we as a society wish to allocate schooling opportunities to students. However, methodological and data problems and the omission of important substantive contextual information about socioeconomic segregation undermine the report's credibility. In addition, the central findings of the authors are disconnected from their ultimate recommendations. And those recommendations do not provide workable solutions or shed any new light on the difficult problem of de facto income segregation. In pursuing such a flawed argument, the authors miss a chance to seriously address this important issue and spur an informed debate on national priorities for public schooling.

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Education | Fresno State prods super seniors' students with excess units to finish | Seattle Times Newspaper

Fresno State prods super seniors' students with excess units to finish

Fresno State student Wesley Sheets figures he's banked more than 200 units in a college career spanning three campuses and nearly ...

By Cyndee Fontana

McClatchy Newspapers

FRESNO, Calif. — Fresno State student Wesley Sheets figures he's banked more than 200 units in a college career spanning three campuses and nearly a decade.

And he's not done yet.

Most bachelor's degrees require 120 to 130 units. But Sheets, 29, said he isn't ready to graduate because he changed majors, couldn't transfer some units between campuses and struggled academically after a death in his family.

Now, unit-rich students like him are getting more attention on California State University campuses. Authorities are nudging students — often called "super seniors" — to graduate and make room in the cash-strapped system.

The 23-campus CSU has clamped down on admissions as it works to reduce enrollment by 40,000 students

SAFRA Heads to the Senate � Student Activism

SAFRA Heads to the Senate

March 24, 2010 in Students

With the passage of health care reform and the SAFRA student aid package in the House of Representatives on Sunday night, the two initiatives move to the Senate for what could be final approval.

The Washington Post has an article out this morning about where the Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act (SAFRA) stands, and it’s got mostly good news for supporters of the measure. A spokesman for Senator Ben Nelson (D-FL), a SAFRA skeptic, is quoted as saying that “it looks like” student loan reform is “in the health-care and education legislation to stay.” The Post itself says that

voiceofsandiego.org | NBright and Early: The Education Newsblitz

voiceofsandiego.org | News. Investigation. Analysis. Conversation. Intelligence.

Bright and Early: The Education Newsblitz

National test scores come out today. I'll keep you posted if I spot anything interesting -- and if you want to do some digging on your own, keep an eye on my Twitter feed for a link to the results! Now for the newsblitz:

Eleven percent of San Diego Unified freshman average a D or lower in their classes -- more than in any other high school grade. The numbers are much higher in disadvantaged schools. We explore why freshman year is a crucial point for teens and a red flag for future dropouts.
KPBS has this nice explainer on school funding in California as part of their series on Proposition 13.
We also fact checked a San Diego Unified official's statement that the school district had lost 25 percent of its revenue in the past three years. The budget has definitely taken a hit, but the statement is wrong .

State’s reading scores show no improvement on national exam | GothamSchools

State’s reading scores show no improvement on national exam

by Anna Phillips

New York State's eighth grade students are scoring at about the national average on a reading exam, but their scores haven't significantly changed in over a decade.

Results are out this morning for the nation’s reading test, and the numbers show New York State students’ scores have plateaued in the last eight years.

The National Assessment of Educational Progress, commonly known as NAEP, or the nation’s report card, shows that not only have state scores not changed since the test was last administered in 2008, the state hasn’t seen significant growth since the late 1990s.

This year, the average score of a New York State fourth grade student was 224 points and in 2002, that number was 222 points. The picture is similar for eighth grade students: this year their

Mike Huckabee: Kids Leave School Not Because They Are Dumb, But Because They Are BORED - THE DAILY RIFF - Be Smarter. About Education.

Mike Huckabee: Kids Leave School Not Because They Are Dumb, But Because They Are BORED - THE DAILY RIFF - Be Smarter. About Education.: "

Sir Ken Robinson Chats With Huckabee
Slams "Data Download" Education & "Fake ADHD Epidemic
Call For Arts & Debate As Critical In Schools

Video Below

One of the best conversations on the subject of the arts in education, creativity and innovation is between Sir Ken Robinson, inarguably one of "the most gifted communicators" about creativity and Mike Huckabee, former Governor of Arkansas and currently host of Fox's "Huckabee".

Sir Ken warns that not only does our individual sense of purpose and meaning in life come from identifying and pursuing our strengths, talents and interests, but our nation's economic health depends on it: "Innovating means developing everybody's talents".

One revealing story Sir Ken shares is about how Paul McCartney and George Harrison, "one half of the Beatles" while both in the same music class, were each pegged by their music

No You Can't (Featuring John Boehner)

http://perezhilton.com/2010-03-23-georgia-school-allows-gay-teen-to-bring-same-sex-date-to-prom

Georgia School Allows Gay Teen To Bring Same-Sex Date To Prom!!

We can't get over how brave these kids are!!

Another High School, this time in Cochran, Georgia, has received press for a homosexual student requesting to bring a same-sex date to prom, only this one has a happier ending than in Mississippi!

Derrick Martin asked Bleckley County school officials if could bring his boyfriend to his senior prom, and last week they gave him the official okay!!

Fantastic!!

Martin says:

“I didn’t expect them to say yes. It’s who I am. I have the same rights. It’s my senior prom and I wanted to be able to prove not everyone would cancel prom. At first she said no, Cochran wasn’t ready for it. But then last week, school officials said they have no policy in place against it. It’s standing up for the rights thing, especially after the Mississippi canceled prom. It’s senior prom. It’s pretty big.”

What a sweet kid! Way to make a stand!

And the school officials seemed to have a much more logical perspective on the matter.

Michelle Masters, the school's principal, says:

Closing schools affects communities as well as kids - USATODAY.com

Closing schools affects communities as well as kids

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — In a neighborhood dotted with boarded up homes, trash and gang graffiti, McCoy Elementary has been an oasis.

Now that the 94-year-old school is closing, residents are fearful that the neighborhood could become even worse, attracting drug dealers and vandals when the children are gone. McCoy is among the roughly half of Kansas City district schools expected to shut down before class resumes next fall, part of a wave of school closures across the country.

VIDEO: Kansas City closes many schools to avoid bankruptcy

FIRING TEACHERS: First step to reform or useless effort?

"When it does close, it's going to get bad around here," said Virginia Stanley, standing outside her home with her husband, her 22-year-old granddaughter and her two young great-grandchildren, who live with them.

Superintendents of struggling districts are winning praise for confronting budget woes by shuttering half-empty and underperforming schools, a move often blocked by local politics in the past. In many cases, the schools have been declining for years, but were never closed because residents and local advocacy groups fought to keep them. Now school leaders have an argument that trumps any parent outrage: The struggling economy makes these schools a luxury that districts can no longer afford.

Student Q&A With Sec. Duncan C-SPAN Video Player -

C-SPAN Video Player - Student Q&A With Sec. Duncan:

STUDENT Q&A WITH SEC. DUNCAN

Tuesday

Education Sec. Arne Duncan participated in a discussion on U.S. education policy with students from the CloseUp Foundation, answering questions on the Obama Administration's priorities for primary and secondary education, as well as the future of No Child Left Behind.
Washington, DC

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