|
A BOLDER, BROADER APPROACH TO EDUCATION
A new task force of national policy experts with diverse religious
and political affiliations, in public policy fields including
education, social welfare, health, housing, and civil rights today
launched a campaign calling for a "Broader, Bolder Approach to
Education" to break a decades-long cycle of reform efforts that
promised much and have achieved far too little. The Task Force's
framework points to the many flaws in the approach of the current No
Child Left Behind (NCLB) law and charges that the nation's education
and youth development policy has erred by relying on school
improvement alone to raise achievement levels of disadvantaged
children. According to the Task Force, multitudes of children are
growing up in circumstances that hinder their educational
achievement. Statistics suggest the rhetoric of leaving no child
behind has trumped reality. As the Task Force's prominent ads have
noted, "Some schools have demonstrated unusual effectiveness. But
even they cannot, by themselves, close the entire gap between
students from different backgrounds in a substantial, consistent and
sustainable manner on the full range of academic and non-academic
measures by which we judge student success." The signatories to
"Bolder Approach" read like a Who's Who of diverse national leaders
from all political and policy spectrums, who have come to agree that
the policy embodied in NCLB has failed. The release of the "Broader,
Bolder" statement marks the beginning of a long-term effort to
persuade federal, state and local policymakers to consider a more
enriching framework as they work to support every child's education.
A PUBLIC ENGAGEMENT PRIMER
Authentic public engagement is a highly inclusive problem-solving
approach through which regular citizens deliberate and collaborate
on complex public problems. Rather than relegating people to the
sidelines, it invites them to join the public dialogue surrounding a
problem and provides them the tools to do so productively. As a
result, leaders know where the public stands as problem solving
progresses, while citizens themselves contribute to solutions
through their input, ideas and actions. The Center for the
Advancement of Public Engagement has released a primer on ways to
cultivate greater community engagement with public life and a more
citizen-centered approach to politics. The primer is organized
around four themes to help citizens engage other citizens in their
work toward a common goal: Creating Civic Capacity for Public
Problem-Solving; Ten Core Principles of Public Engagement; Examples
of Key Practices and Strategies; and the Power of "Citizen
Choicework." "In our society, public decision-making is typically
the domain of powerful interest groups or highly specialized
experts," the primer states. "To the extent that citizens are
considered at all, it is usually as consumers or clients of
government, while as a whole, the public is most often viewed as an
audience to educate or a problem to manage. In this dominant
framework, the citizenry is rarely viewed as a vital resource or
potentially powerful partner in problem-solving."
A FINAL PUSH FOR NCLB: PRESIDENT BUSH'S BELEAGUERED EDUCATION INITIATIVE
In the waning days of the Bush presidency, U.S. Secretary of
Education Margaret Spellings is running one last campaign, writes
Sheryl Gay Stolberg of The New York Times. She has been on the road
for months, promoting President Bush's beleaguered education
initiative, No Child Left Behind, delivering one sales pitch after
another. "I'm pretty sure that the new president, whoever it is,
will not show up and work on George Bush's domestic achievement on
Day 1," she told a group of civic leaders and educators, promising
to do "everything in my power" to improve the law before the White
House changes hands. For Ms. Spellings, a longtime and exceedingly
loyal member of the Bush inner circle, it was a startling, if tacit,
admission that the president's education legacy is in danger. No
Child Left Behind -- the signature domestic achievement, beyond tax
cuts, of the entire Bush presidency -- has changed the lives of
millions of American students, parents, teachers and school
administrators. Yet its future is in grave doubt. The law imposed
unprecedented testing requirements and tough expectations on the
nation's nearly 99,000 public schools. But despite rising test
scores, there is no hard-and-fast evidence, most experts say, that
it is actually improving student achievement. Today, roughly 11
percent of schools do not meet the law's standards -- a figure that
is expected to climb sharply as more schools struggle to meet the
demand that all students be proficient in reading and math by 2014.
Both supporters and detractors of No Child Left Behind agree that
when the history of the Bush administration is written, the
president will have succeeded, at least, in changing the American
conversation about education, by insisting on a strict emphasis on
standards and accountability.
NEW JERSEY LOCAL EDUCATION FUND "A GREAT CATALYST"
For 15 years, the Montclair Fund for Educational Excellence has
served as a vital arm to the Montclair Board of Education (BOE),
writes Taressa Stovall of The Montclair Times. "We give grants to
teachers to do community engagement, hold fund-raisers and work with
the BOE to support school-community initiatives," said MFEE
executive director Lois Whipple, whose son and daughter are
Montclair High School alumni. "I want parents to know that our sole
mission is to support the Montclair Public Schools, its students and
families," she said. MFEE President Julie Jackson explained that
MFEE works in tandem with the BOE, "but independently. We want
people to understand the money they donate to the MFEE is not
funding the BOE, but it is funding grants from teachers and staff
members in the schools." She added that, "When we started, residents
said, 'My taxes are already high enough, so why would I want to
contribute more money to the schools?'" Now, MFEE's value is
recognized by parents and administrators alike. Montclair
Superintendent of Schools Frank Alvarez is positive about the
partnership between the local education fund and his district. "MFEE
is a great catalyst that has energized our public schools," Alvarez
said. "I am particularly proud of the accomplishments of MFEE and of
having served on its original board."
CONTINUATION OF CONTROVERSIAL D.C. VOUCHER PROGRAM IN DOUBT
The possible demise of a groundbreaking federal voucher program in
Washington, D.C. is one more sign of the new directions K-12
education reform might soon take as a result of the 2008 election,
write Valerie Strauss and Bill Turque of The Washington Post. The
aid program awards scholarships of up to $7,500 a year to 2,000
low-income D.C. children for tuition and other fees at participating
private schools. Creation of the program in 2004 put the District at
the forefront of the school-choice movement. At that time, the
Republican-led federal government was taking steps to use the
nation's capital -- with its ailing public school system -- as a
showcase for educational reforms, which also included the country's
most sweeping charter school law. Parents of scholarship recipients
offer high praise for the program, crediting it with changing the
direction of their children's lives. The program has also drawn
criticism. A 2007 Government Accountability Office study found that
some participating private schools lacked proper permits to operate.
It has also been faulted for allowing ineligible families to receive
federal funds and for failing to ensure that families selected
accredited schools. Opponents said they thought the program blurred
the separation of church and state because more than half of the
students have enrolled in religious schools, most of them Catholic.
SCHOOL SIZE NOT KEY TO SMALL HIGH SCHOOL SUCCESS, STUDY FINDS
A new study by Education Resource Strategies, "Strategic Designs:
Lessons for Leading Edge Small Urban High Schools," examines nine
high-performing small urban high schools throughout the country to
better understand how they achieved their success. The report by
Karen Hawley Miles and Regis Shields finds that the success of small
urban high schools rests less on their smaller size and more on how
they use their resources strategically. The high-performing schools
in the study -- all schools with flexibility over their resources --
proactively manage people, time, and money, and demonstrate that
it's not just how much money is spent that impacts student learning,
but how well resources are used. "Creating small schools is about so
much more than smallness," said Regis Shields, the report's
co-author. "It's about how schools take advantage of size and
rethink the high school experience for urban students."
STUDY HIGHLIGHTS GLOBAL DIGITAL DIVIDE BETWEEN KIDS AND PARENTS
The Center for Media Research notes that the recent Norton Online
Living Report by Symantec indicates how kids and adults around the
world are spending their time online. Out of thousands of children
and adult Internet users surveyed in the U.S., U.K., Australia,
Germany, France, Brazil, China and Japan, 52 percent report having
made friends online, suggesting that "don't talk to strangers"
doesn't apply in online worlds. In addition, 46 percent of users who
made friends online said they enjoyed those relationships as much or
more than friendships made offline. The study further found that
while parents in the U.S. think their kids are online two hours a
month, in reality, kids report spending 20 hours a month. 41 percent
of U.S. teens ages 13-17 years old agree that their parent have no
idea what they are looking at when online. Marian Merritt, Internet
Safety Advocate at Symantec, concluded that, "Parents are in the
dark when it comes to knowing what their kids are doing online. This
report clearly demonstrates a global digital divide between parents
and their cyber-savvy children."
EARLY SIGNS IDENTIFIED FOR HIGH SCHOOL FAILURE
According to a new report based on an extensive study of student
achievement in San Diego schools, students at risk of failing the
California State-required high school exit exam can be identified as
early as fourth grade based on grades, classroom behavior and test
scores, writes Seema Mehta of the Los Angeles Times. The report by
the Public Policy Institute of California suggests taking a portion
of the millions of dollars now spent on struggling high school
seniors to help them pass the exam and focusing them on students in
the younger grades. "From a political standpoint," the report
states, "such spending [on older students] seems necessary. However,
our results strongly suggest that these 11th-hour interventions by
themselves are unlikely to yield the intended results." Some say it
would be unfair to reduce support for older students to pay for
increased support for younger ones. "We shouldn't be put in a
position where we are pitting the outcomes of seniors against the
future of preschoolers. That makes no sense," said State Assemblyman
Pedro Nava (D-Santa Barbara). But State Superintendent of Public
Instruction Jack O'Connell said school districts ought to have
greater flexibility in how they spend such funds. "We need to have
comprehensive intervention and not wait until 12th grade." The exit
exam was created by California legislators in an effort to
standardize the achievement of high school graduates across the
state's 1,053 school districts. Students in the class of 2006 were
the first required to pass the exam to receive diplomas.
ETS REPORT OPENS NEW WINDOWS ON NATIONAL DATA
Learning, and developing the ability to learn and think, begins in
the nursery, according to a new report from the Educational Testing
Service (ETS). In "Windows on Achievement and Inequality," authors
Paul Barton and Richard Coley comprehensively analyze not just data
from NCLB requirements but much more, going beyond the typical
information about the status of education achievement in the United
States and gaps in achievement among the nation's students. Though
NCLB monitors whether more students are proficient, Barton and Coley
also examine what's happening to both top-performing and
lower-performing students. The authors also make the case for
tracking information about how much students learned over a given
school year and from grade to grade, rather the usual comparison of
disparate groups of students within the same grade. They signal that
different states have established different definitions of what it
means to be proficient, and demystify these definitions by providing
examples of the kinds of knowledge and skills that students are
likely to be able to demonstrate at particular score levels. The
authors also demonstrate how changes in the demographics of the
American student population over the past several decades have
affected national test scores, and provide a simple, summative view
of where U.S. students rank globally by summarizing results from
international assessments.
THE THREE C'S OF URBAN SCIENCE EDUCATION
Chris Emdin, assistant professor of science education in the
Department of Mathematics, Science, and Technology at Teachers
College, Columbia University won the 2007 Outstanding Doctoral
Dissertation Award from Phi Delta Kappa International. In "The Three
C's of Urban Science Education," published in the June 2008 issue of
Phi Delta Kappan Magazine, Emdin writes that, "In each of my roles
as teacher, administrator, and researcher in urban public schools, I
have been struck by the magnitude of the separation between the
culture of school science and that of urban students." He goes on to
elaborate "three C's" he feels are critical to engaging urban public
school students in science education: cogenerative dialogues,
co-teaching, and cosmopolitanism. Cogenerative dialogues are
lunchtime, before- or after-school sessions where teachers and small
groups of students share impressions of what's going on during
science classes; co-teaching occurs when students master important
concepts and are encouraged to explain them to classmates, either in
pairs or at the front of the classroom; cosmopolitanism is the
linking of insights from cogenerative discussion groups within a
school into a collective dialogue about what's working and what
isn't working in classrooms. "Using the three C's well means
changing traditional approaches to teaching and being willing to
look at the urban science classroom in new ways. The urban science
classroom must be seen as more than just a place where students
learn science; it must be seen as a field to be studied and
understood by both teachers and students while both engage in
teaching and learning science," Emdin explains.
MASSACHUSETTS GOVERNOR PROPOSES "READINESS SCHOOLS"
Governor Deval Patrick of Massachusetts (D), in a potential break
with the teachers unions that helped elect him, is set to propose a
new form of public school that would combine features of the state's
charter schools and Boston's experimental pilot schools, write Tania
deLuzuriaga and Matt Viser of the Boston Globe. "Readiness Schools,"
a key element of his sweeping ten-year education plan to be unveiled
later this month, would be governed by local boards and freed from
many constraints imposed by unions, school districts, and the state.
Supporters say this would adapt schools to community needs and offer
new alternatives in school systems. However, teachers unions have
long criticized charter schools, which typically hire nonunion
teachers, and teacher union officials have said that they like the
governor's program as a concept but want more assurances that their
members' contracts are protected. The unions have fiercely protected
their influence over issues such as hiring policies, and could
represent a significant roadblock as Patrick tries to win political
support for the proposal.
ONE TEEN'S FIGHT AGAINST EARLY PREGNANCY AND STDS
More than 360,000 adolescents contract a sexually transmitted
disease each year in Los Angeles County. In 2005, the most recent
year for which data are available, 5,113 Los Angeles County girls
younger than 18 gave birth -- 3.4 percent of all births that year.
Francisco Vara-Orta of the Los Angeles Times profiles 15-year-old
Andreina Cordova, who had just finished eighth grade when she became
one of the youngest students ever hired by Planned Parenthood to be
a peer advocate in a program whose goal is to reduce teen pregnancy
and STD rates. Andreina does her outreach at the epicenter of the
crisis, in South L.A., which has the county's highest percentage of
teen births and rates of sexually transmitted diseases according to
the county's Department of Public Health. Asked why a 15-year-old
would risk insults, humiliation and rejection to counsel peers on
birth control and STDs, Andreina summons the memory of a
middle-school classmate who became pregnant and dropped out. "I
mean, I was in middle school. They don't teach you a lot about sex
there," Andreina said. She quickly understood her goal: to educate
teenagers on how to make wise decisions. When she asked to attend
her first Planned Parenthood event, to her surprise, her parents
agreed. Her father Andres Cordova explained: "My parents never
talked to me about sex. So many of us back in El Salvador just had
to figure out things on our own, from our friends usually."
Andreina's work is anchored in Planned Parenthood's Ujima Program,
which preaches more abstinence and less sex. At least "until you
know what you're getting into and the consequences," Andreina said.
TOO FEW SUPERINTENDENTS IN PIPELINE, SURVEY FINDS
According to a nationwide survey of school superintendents recently
released by the American Association of School Administrators Center
for System Leadership, there are not enough candidates to fill a
looming number of job openings in the superintendency. The "2007
State of the Superintendency Survey: Aspiring to the Superintendency"
contains new data that offer a snapshot of the state of the school
superintendency pipeline, incentives and barriers for joining the
superintendency, and steps for expanding the pipeline to ensure a
high-quality pool of superintendent candidates. The report finds
that 85 percent of the superintendents surveyed believe an
inadequate supply of educational leaders exists to fill the
anticipated superintendent openings in the near future. The biggest
incentive for those considering the superintendency as a career is
improving teaching and learning for students. The biggest
disincentives are lack of funding for school systems, personal
family sacrifices and school board relations and challenges.
Respondents said the top two initiatives to increase the supply of
high-quality superintendent candidates are identifying and
encouraging superintendent candidates and creating
mentoring/coaching programs and networks.
GEORGIA SCHOOLS RECEIVE TENTATIVE WAIVER ON MATH FOR NCLB
Georgia State Superintendent of Schools Kathy Cox received tentative
approval last week from U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret
Spellings for a waiver to lower the percentage of students that must
pass Georgia's annual Criterion-Referenced Competency Tests (CRCT)
in math under No Child Left Behind, writes Laura Diamond of the
Atlanta Journal-Constitution. More students failed the math tests
this year because the state has been phasing in a new curriculum
that covers more new material and has less review than before. The
state overhauled its curriculum in response to years of criticism
from education experts who said it was too weak. This was the first
school year that eighth-graders took harder math tests to match the
more difficult material, with about 38 percent failing, according to
preliminary scores. "If you increase the rigor of a test, it might
take a little longer to get all children up to that higher level of
proficiency," Cox said last week. "We don't want to penalize schools
knowing they got kids to a higher level of math than they ever did
before." The waiver only affects how schools will be graded under
the federal law and does not affect consequences students face under
state law, so thousands of students who failed the fifth- and
eighth-grade math CRCT exams must pass retests for promotion.
|
