Tuesday, March 16, 2010

Bush Education Secretary Spellings Worried About Obama's 'No Child' Revamp - The Two-Way - Breaking News, Analysis Blog : NPR

Bush Education Secretary Spellings Worried About Obama's 'No Child' Revamp

By Mark Memmott

Bush-era Education secretary Margaret Spellings isn't ready yet to say that the Obama administration has repudiated the No Child Left Behind reforms enacted when her boss was in the White House.

"Too soon to tell," she said to NPR's Linda Wertheimer earlier today, after being asked about President Barack Obama's plans for revamping federal education policy and whether its a full-blown rejection of NCLB. "There obviously are some details lacking" in Obama's plans.

But she does have some concerns about what she's hearing. In particularly, she says, thanks to NCLB "every single school in this country feels some amount of obligation, pressure, responsibility ... on behalf of poor and special ed and minority kids that are in their schools."

The Obama plan, she fears, focuses too much only on the "bottom 10%" of schools -- and "I worry that in the trade off, we've let the other up to 90% of the schools sort of escape any kind of pressure, particularly on behalf of minority, poor and special ed students."

Growth, Prosperity, Broadband | The White House

The White House Blog

Growth, Prosperity, Broadband

Posted by Jesse Lee on March 16, 2010 at 04:25 PM EDT

Moments ago the President issued a statement on the National Broadband Plan just released by the Federal Communications Commission:

America today is on the verge of a broadband-driven Internet era that will unleash innovation, create new jobs and industries, provide consumers with new powerful sources of information, enhance American safety and security, and connect communities in ways that strengthen our democracy. Just as past generations of Americans met the great infrastructure challenges of the day, such as building the Transcontinental railroad and the Interstate highways, so too must we harness the potential of the Internet. Expanding broadband across the nation will build a foundation of sustained economic growth and the widely shared prosperity we all seek.
I commend Chairman Julius Genachowski, the Commissioners, and the FCC staff for their hard work in developing the National Broadband Plan.
My Administration will build upon our efforts over the past year to make America's nationwide broadband infrastructure the world’s most powerful platform for economic growth and prosperity, including improving access to mobile broadband, maximizing technology innovation, and supporting a nationwide, interoperable public safety wireless broadband network.

FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski has a post up on the broadband blog laying out the basics -- or if you prefer, here he is in video form:

NEA’s Membership Numbers Don’t Quite Add Up | Intercepts

NEA’s Membership Numbers Don’t Quite Add Up

by Mike Antonucci

The National Education Association posted its membership numbers as of December 31, 2009, and something’s hinky somewhere.
You may recall EIA reported that NEA experienced membership losses in 2009 – its first losses in 27 years. That report was based on a presentation made by NEA Secretary-Treasurer Becky Pringle to the union’s board of directors the weekend of December 12. That report was quadruple-sourced, so I have no doubt as to its accuracy.
The board was briefed that active membership (those working in K-12 and higher ed) was down by almost 17,000 while total membership (including retirees, students and others) was down by almost 37,000. One source gave me NEA total membership at 3,198,513.
In less than three weeks, however, the numbers turned around. They now show active membership up by 14,785 and total membership at 3,269,523 – an increase of 15,640 from 2008. So unless NEA picked up 71,000 members over the Christmas holidays, these numbers are at odds with the numbers presented to the board. They also fly in the face of all the reported teacher layoffs in 2009, with 30 NEA state affiliates reporting an increase in membership – some of them huge.
Working K-12 education employees, both teachers and support workers, are NEA’s core constituency. For comparison purposes, here are the state-by-state active K-12 numbers as of December 31, 2009, with the change in membership, and percentage change, since December 31, 2008:
National – 2,753,129 (up 8,235, +0.3%)
Alabama – 72,145 (down 188, -0.3%)
Alaska – 11,140 (up 298, +2.7%)
Arizona – 31,074 (down 454, -1.4%)
Arkansas – 13,416 (down 48, -0.4%)
California – 301,237 (down 5,463, -1.8%)
Colorado – 35,585 (up 122, +0.3%)
Connecticut – 37,427 (up 277, +0.7%)
Delaware – 10,941 (up 213, +2.0%)

Obama's "A" word, throwing teachers under the bus? | Philadelphia Public School Notebook

Obama's "A" word, throwing teachers under the bus?

by Samuel Reed III on Mar 16 2010

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The “A” word is becoming the key buzzword in education reform. President Obama’s sweeping education reform plans are anchored on accountability. But does accountability mean some deserving and undeserving teachers will be thrown under the bus?

Recently Obama weighed in on the plans to fire the entire 93-member staff at Central Falls High School in Rhode Island.

Obama’s response to the firing matches his reform plans. He delivered his standard accountability rhetoric during an appearance before the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce when he declared

"So if a school is struggling, we have to work with the principal and the teachers to find a solution. We've got to give them a chance to make meaningful improvements. But if a school continues to fail its students year after year after year, if it doesn't show signs of improvement, then there's got to be a sense of accountability.”

Central Falls High is a low-performing high school according to No Child Left Behind accountability measures. Central Falls High has a graduation rate of 48 percent. Only seven percent of its students are at grade-level proficiency in math.

Race to the Top encourages accountability

Central Falls High's fate coincides with Rhode Island's push to garner millions of dollars of stimulus funds for education reform.

Accountability is already taking shape in Philadelphia. Many Philadelphia

This year: mandates. Next year: autonomy | Philadelphia Public School Notebook

This year: mandates. Next year: autonomy

Renaissance Schools will experience a different approach than they did as Empowerment Schools.

by Brenden Beck

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The District’s proposed Renaissance Schools initiative, scheduled to be operational by this fall, will give school managers autonomy from District control. But this wasn’t always the District strategy for dealing with low-performing schools.

The plan comes only 18 months after the launch of the Empowerment Schools initiative, which seeks to improve low-performing schools by increasing the District’s scrutiny, support, and control.

When Superintendent Arlene Ackerman reaffirmed her commitment to that approach at the start of the 2009-10 school year, she made it clear that there would be “a lot more monitoring” of the District’s 95 Empowerment Schools, which are schools that have failed repeatedly to meet their academic targets under the No Child Left Behind law.

Central office and regional superintendents implemented the Empowerment program by mandating a scripted curriculum, performing frequent spot checks, and providing additional staff positions, including counselors and instructional specialists.

Increased control over the Empowerment Schools is evident this year in the Corrective Reading and Math lessons. Each day, teachers and students devote two or more hours to a curriculum that provides a script from which teachers are to read.

As a result, principals and faculties have less control over the curriculum, a move that has led some to question the program’s name.

“Empowerment seems to be the wrong word,” says James H. Lytle, professor at the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education.

“Disempowerment would be a more accurate description.”

The Renaissance Schools plan draws its 14 eligible schools from the group of 95 Empowerment Schools. In stark contrast to the older program, however, the turnaround teams that will be put in charge of Renaissance Schools – whether District staff, charter management organizations, or EMOs – will be given autonomy to incorporate successful programs and ideas.

Ten Questions About ESEA Reauthorization - Politics K-12 - Education Week

Ten Questions About ESEA Reauthorization

By Alyson Klein on March 16, 2010 3:30 PM | No Comments | No TrackBacks

So, the places to see and be seen tomorrow are the two Capitol Hill hearing rooms where U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan will be taking questions from lawmakers on the House and Senate education committees about the ESEA blueprint.

He'll start off in the Senate (at 10 a.m.) and move over to the House (at 2:30 p.m.)

As I've said before, reaction from many groups has been generally positive (except, of course, the unions). But we haven't heard much from lawmakers, beyond canned statements (I guess they're busy with this), so the hearings should be interesting.

There's a lot in the blueprint that needs to be fleshed out, and maybe Congress can help us get some answers. Here are some suggested questions:

1) What exactly does it mean to be "college- and career-ready," especially for states that don't sign on to the Common Core State Initiative? And, in particular, what "careers" are schools responsible for preparing students for? For example, is Walmart greeter on the list? Because if it is, I think we're mostly there already. I know, that's probably not what you had in mind, right? How do we make sure we get the career part right, without being accused of being too prescriptive?

2) ) What's up with this 2020 goal for getting all students college- and career-ready? You're saying that's not a hard-and-fast deadline. What will that look like in practice? How should we structure growth models around that?

3) How do you want us to structure the transition from the new accountability system to a new one? It could be a really messy process, and we'd like to avoid that.

4) The blueprint says that schools that aren't in the lowest 10 percent of schools

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

: This Kid Is In; Hundreds of local teens didn't get into San Diego State University when it changed its admissions rules, ending the guarantee of admission for local students who met the minimum criteria. But I was especially interested about one applicant in particular: Alfredo Beltran, who showed up in our story about the SDSU changes. We wrote about why Beltran needed to get in:
Alfredo Beltran, a senior at San Diego High School of Business, only applied to

A Blueprint for Helping Black Students

A coalition of black teachers and community leaders are seeking changes to boost the academic achievement of black children in San Diego County schools, from training school staff in race relations to offering more optional classes on African American history.

"Our children are beyond a state of emergency," their report reads. "They are experiencing on a daily basis a mental/educational death."

African American students, as a group, have higher dropout rates and lagging test scores compared to the county average. This isn't the first time that someone has tried to highlight the problem and possible fixes: Black leaders created a similar "blueprint" for helping students in the 1980s.

Some schools are already following those earlier recommendations, but other ideas have been abandoned or inconsistently applied, said Wendell Bass, president of the local Association of African American Educators. Bass said the goal is to set up a clear

Khalil Gibran Academy principal resigns midyear | GothamSchools

Khalil Gibran Academy principal resigns midyear

by Anna Phillips

In the latest step in the turbulent saga of Khalil Gibran International Academy, the school’s third principal in as many years resigned yesterday.
The departure of principal Holly Reichert, who started at Khalil Gibran in 2008, comes just days after a federal commission found that the city discriminated against the school’s founding principal by forcing her to resign before the school opened. In an unusual move for a school principal, Reichert is leaving to become a literacy coach at the East-West School of International Studies, a secondary school in Queens.
Rocked by controversy since it opened in 2007, Khalil Gibran, the city’s only Arab-language school, will now have a new interim principal: Beshir Abdellatif. The former principal of Law, Government, and Community Service High School since 2008, Adbellatif has been working in the city’s public schools since 1991.
The Department of Education’s statement follows:

“Holly Reichert has decided to leave Khalil Gibran International Academy to take position as a

Prizing English Language Learners: A Conversation with Luther Burbank High School Principal Ted Appel | LFA: Join The Conversation - Public School Insights

Prizing English Language Learners: A Conversation with Luther Burbank High School Principal Ted Appel

By Claus von Zastrow on March 10, 2010

People in our business commonly talk about the challenges of teaching students who are still learning English. Not so Ted Appel ofLuther Burbank High School in California. He sees these students as an asset.

More than half of his school's students are English language learners. About nine in ten come from low-income families. Though some schools might see such students as a drag on their test scores, Luther Burbank High welcomes them from neighborhoods far from its own. For Appel, such students enrich the school in ways standard school rating systems cannot begin to capture.

Appel recently told us about his school--and about the state and federal policies that can at times impede its vital work.

Public School Insights: Tell me a little bit about Luther Burbank High School.

Appel: It is a comprehensive high school with about 2100 students. About 90% are on free or reduced lunch. About 35% are Southeast Asian, mostly Hmong. We are about 25% Latino, about 20% African-American, and whatever percentage is left is from everywhere else in the world.

Public School Insights: So you must have a lot of different languages spoken in the school.

Appel: Yes. The predominant languages are Hmong and Spanish. For about 55% of our student population, English is not the primary language spoken at home. They are English learners.

Public School Insights: I would assume this population has a pretty big impact on your school and the teaching strategies you to use. Is that true?

Duncan On "Morning Joe": A New No Child Left Behind? - THE DAILY RIFF - Be Smarter. About Education.

Duncan On "Morning Joe": A New No Child Left Behind?

The chess pieces are starting to line up for the passing of a new education law which is morphing from the old No Child Left Behind into what is now called ESEA. Link here to overview from The New York Times, outlining some of the challenges in its implementation.

Excerpts:

" . . .The standardized tests developed by the states under the No Child law focus on measuring the number of students in each grade level in each school who are proficient in reading and math. Now the administration would like to shift the focus to measuring each student's academic growth, regardless of the performance level at which he starts. . . .

"It's a serious blueprint, and one that would be a huge improvement over current law," Michael Petrilli, a vice president at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute who served in George W. Bush's Education Department, wrote in his blog. One feature he liked, Mr. Petrilli said, was that the blueprint would "focus most of its muscle and prescriptiveness on a handful of the worst schools. . ."

"Make A Future" Video

by CJW

The UK Future View Of Education's Role In This Clever Video (3min)

Continue Reading at The Daily Riff

Media: How Much Would You Pay For This? This Week In Education

This Week In Education

Media: How Much Would You Pay For This?

How much would you pay for this (or anything else online)? Millions, I know. But there are precious few outlets that require readers to pay for access to content in the education space as everywhere else. There are just too many free options already in the mix for anyone to wall themselves off. More and more each day. And recent polls show readers will just move elsewhere when they're charged for content.

But some folks seem to have pulled it off, including the Wall Street Journal and other high-end outlets. In education, EdWeek comes to mind, with its hybrid model, along with the

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Tuesday, March 16, 2010