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Friday, May 21, 2010

Notes from the news, May 21 | Philadelphia Public School Notebook

Notes from the news, May 21 | Philadelphia Public School Notebook

Notes from the news, May 21

by Erika Owens
School choice on the ascent The Inquirer (opinion)
Philly's chapter of the Anti-Defamation League has voted in support of vouchers. The national org will vote on the platform in June.
City 4th-graders lag on NAEP reading The Notebook blog
Philly's scores for 4th-graders are below average for 18 urban districts, but the scores for 8th-graders are average.
Only 10 percent of Latino dropouts get a GED The Notebook blog
Latinos also complete high school at lower rates than than their Black and White counterparts.
It's a Statewide Struggle: PSU Connects with Harrisburg Students on Nonviolence & School Funding Philly Education Justice blog PSU students brought their campaign for nonviolence to Harrisburg and produced an On Blast radio segment about it.
More principals lack certification paperwork The Notebook blog
The District released a document explaining why the 15 administrators don't have complete certifications, but many explanations were unclear.
And Now, Today’s GOOD NEWS: Philly Schools Are Not Entirely Hopeless Philebrity
A reader linked Philebrity to a U.S. Dept. of Ed. YouTube video praising the turnaround at Mastery Pickett.
New exhibits encourage interaction USA Today via Delaware Online
PAC's donations to Williams top $3 million The Inquirer
Please email us if we missed anything today or if you have any suggestions of publications, email lists, or other places for us to check for news.
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Notes from the news
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Schools Matter: NAEP Urban Reading Scores 2009: Measuring Poverty, AGAIN

Schools Matter: NAEP Urban Reading Scores 2009: Measuring Poverty, AGAIN

NAEP Urban Reading Scores 2009: Measuring Poverty, AGAIN

by Jim Horn
At the very end of an article in Ed Week that featured various pundits verbally gesticulating on the various meanings that may be attributed to NAEP reading scores comes this nugget below, which, of course, should have led the story. But then if it had, we might feel the need to do something about poverty, rather than treating it as just another reason to strike out on the noble road to corporate education reform.

Detroit is dying with 17 percent unemployment, and the corporate solution is more charter schools and holding teachers accountable for the crimes of corporations that have left the children in rags and their parents homeless.
Tom Loveless, a senior scholar at the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank, offered some cautions about making direct comparisons between the performance of individual districts on NAEP. For one, he said, the exclusion rates for English-language learners and students with disabilities differ considerably across the 18 districts.

Also, he noted that there appears to be a close relationship between the poverty rate of a district’s
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Education - Everything you need to know about the world of education.

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

Fairfax School Board approves $2.2B budget


Spending plan cuts 200 jobs and phases out some programs that support county's poorest schools.
MORE ON EDUCATION


The worst Texas social studies standard

I’ve been reading the social studies standards in Texas as well as the many proposed changes being pushed by religious conservatives on the Board of Education, and playing an entirely subjective game: Which is the most egregious twisting of history?

Improving schools by paying teachers to leave

Economist Eric Hanushek summarizes his plan for turning school budget cuts and more federal bailout funds into an opportunity to improve the teaching ranks: "The first-best solution, based on several decades of consistent research findings, is to lay off ineffective teachers selectively while letting class sizes drift up a bit," he writes. "When the bailout ends, schools would be in a stronger financial position because the permanent teacher workforce would be reduced by the slightly larger class sizes, and this workforce would be of higher quality."

District limbers up for stronger Race to Top


D.C. officials are pushing hard to meet the June 1 application deadline for their second shot at the Obama administration's Race to the Top(RTTT) grant competition. A team led by Eric Lerum, chief of staff to deputy mayor for education Victor Reinoso, has been working to shore up the weaknesses that landed the District's round one application in last place among 16 finalists, with 402.6 out of a possible 500 points. Only Delaware and Tennessee made the first cut.
A maximum of $75 million is available in this round, and D.C.'s prospects are fairly bright, principally because Education Secretary Arne Duncan has said that the next group of winners will be much larger, as many as 10 to 15.
One weak spot that is likely to remain is the District's failure to secure the endorsement of the Washington Teachers' Union. President George Parker said he could not sign on to the application because of his opposition to DCPS' new IMPACT evaluation system for teachers. Under IMPACT, introduced last fall, standardized test scores will comprise 50 percent of the evaluations this year for reading and math teachers in
Fairfax Superintendent Jack D. Dale. (TWP)
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Disparities between white, black students prompt assessment, why? EducationNews.org

EducationNews.org

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Ed Next Research Finds NCLB Has Produced Substantial National Gains In Math Skills

5.10.10 - How has the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act affected student achievement? This is no idle question
Full story
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Disparities between white, black students prompt assessment, why?

5.21.10 - The education system in America, Dr. Martin concluded, is still a long way from answering the fundamental question: "Why is it that African-American students...
Full story
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Factions dig into details of teacher-evaluation law

5.21.10 - A controversial teacher effectiveness bill that fractured the Democratic Party, made some lawmakers weep and led union members to protest on the...
Full story
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Oxford students who take socially useful jobs

5.21.10 - Students at Oxford could be exempt from fees if they later go into "socially useful" jobs, under a blueprint to be considered by the university. ...
Full story
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Rise & Shine: Charter deal hinges on space sharing, for-profits | GothamSchools

Rise & Shine: Charter deal hinges on space sharing, for-profits | GothamSchools

Rise & Shine: Charter deal hinges on space sharing, for-profits

by Philissa Cramer
  • A judge backed a city health teacher sent to the rubber room over vocabulary. (Times, Daily News)
  • A tentative state-union charter school deal fell apart over co-location and for-profit schools. (Daily News)
  • Charter advocate Peter Murphy says for-profit schools don’t exist, only for-profit partners. (Daily News)
  • In launching his State Senate bid, Basil Smikle said his mother is a teacher and UFT member. (Post)
  • City students had mixed national reading test scores. (GothamSchools, Post, Daily News, NY1, WNYC)
  • The city’s scores put it below the national average but better than other urban districts. (Times)
  • The scores show city students are on the right track but still need help, the Daily News says.
  • The 5,000 middle school students losing yellow-bus service could get student Metrocards. (Post, NY1)
  • Budget cuts have put Chicago’s ballroom dance program in danger. (Times)

Remainders: NYSUT threatens to sit out the race for governor

by Anna Phillips
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Despite Criticisms, Berkeley Keeps DNA Assignment Quick Takes: May 21, 2010 - Inside Higher Ed

Quick Takes: May 21, 2010 - Inside Higher Ed

Quick Takes

May 21, 2010

Despite Criticisms, Berkeley Keeps DNA Assignment

The University of California, Berkeley's College of Letters and Science is not yielding to calls for it to drop its plan to ask incoming freshmen and transfers to submit a DNA sample to be analyzed for three genes that have to do with the metabolism of food and drinks. A Tuesday Inside Higher Ed news story opened the floodgates of media coverage by other national and local media outlets. Though Berkeley officials have said the assignment is completely optional and anonymous, the project has been a lightning rod for criticism.
Alix Schwartz, the college's director of undergraduate academic planning, said she and her colleagues are "definitely not canceling the program" in response to the backlash. "Even the negative or ill-informed attention" brought to the plan would "add to the dialogue, and dialogue was what we hoped to generate," she said. Some faculty have voiced concerns about genetic testing "but their response is not hysterical, and we are all talking and listening to one another."
In a letter to Berkeley administrators -- and to Mark Yudof, president of the University of California System -- the Council for Responsible Genetics called the project "woefully naïve." While seemingly harmless, the group's president wrote, the test results have "the risk of increasingly being used out of context in ways that are contrary to the interests of the individual, perhaps even discriminatory, and privacy-invasive." The Center for Genetics and Society, a nonprofit based in Berkeley that has no affiliation with the university, has also asked administrators to cancel the program.

New Controversy Over Milton Friedman Institute

The selection of architects for the Milton Friedman Institute for Research in Economics has renewed controversy over the University of Chicago's planned center to honor the late professor. The university announced last night that Ann Beha Architects has been selected for the project -- just hours after faculty critics issued a press release questioning why architects had been selected with minimal public discussions of the next stages of the project. The controversy isn't about the architects, but the center itself. Many professors have feared that the institute would be so focused on honoring Friedman that it would be associated only with one (right-wing) school of thought. Further, faculty members question the need for a new institute, especially compared with other priorities. "We would hate to think that the university's evident fixation on financial assets and its desire to exploit the Friedman brand name for fund-raising purposes would lead it to neglect its most valuable assets, its students, faculty and staff, while committing itself to a project whose very name reinforces a narrow, retrograde,
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Texas board adds Obama to high school history

Texas board adds Obama to high school history

Texas board adds Obama to high school history

Thursday, May 20, 2010
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(05-20) 20:56 PDT Austin, Texas (AP) --
The Texas State Board of Education has added President Barack Obama's name to a high school history class, rather than just referring to the election of the first black president.
The change Thursday came only after a tense debate about whether to include Obama's middle name, which is Hussein.
The board is debating social studies standards that will be used to teach some 4.8 million students for the next 10 years. A final vote is expected Friday.
The board had been criticized for not including Obama's name.
Democrat Lawrence Allen offered an amendment to add it. Republican David Bradley then said, "I think we give him the full honor and privilege of his full name."
Democrats bristled. Bradley finally withdrew his amendment, saying it was "to put an


Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2010/05/20/national/a205544D15.DTL&type=education#ixzz0oZ9p8lCp
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Vote on social studies standards likely today | News for Dallas, Texas | Dallas Morning News | Latest News

Vote on social studies standards likely today | News for Dallas, Texas | Dallas Morning News| Latest News

Vote on social studies standards likely today



06:44 AM CDT on Friday, May 21, 2010

By TERRENCE STUTZ / The Dallas Morning News
tstutz@dallasnews.com
AUSTIN – Social conservatives on the State Board of Education were poised late Thursday night to push for a curriculum standard that would encourage high school students to question the legal doctrine of church-state separation – a sore point for social conservative groups across the country.
After working on scores of additions and changes to new social studies standards for elementary and middle schools, board members turned their attention to the requirements for high schools – where most of the disputes on the board have surfaced.
Also Online
The board is supposed to wrap up the adoption process today with a vote scheduled on the final curriculum requirements, which will dictate what is taught in all Texas schools and provide the basis for textbooks and student achievement tests over the next
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