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The white interest in school desegregation
Scholarship concerning desegregation, affirmative action, and
voluntary integration is primarily, if not exclusively, focused on
whether such policies harm or benefit minorities. Scant attention is
paid to the benefits whites receive in multiracial schools despite
white interests underpinning over thirty years of Supreme Court
integration jurisprudence. Robert A. Garda, Jr. of the Loyola
University of New Orleans College of Law explores the academic and
social benefits whites receive in multiracial schools. According to
the author, multiracial schools will not be created or endure unless
white parents believe it to be in their children's best interests.
The article describes the extreme racial segregation in schools
today and how white children are the most racially isolated
students. This isolation contributes to the unconscious and
automatic racial bias that infects everyone and will impair white
children's ability to successfully navigate the multicultural
marketplace. Integrated schools, however, can de-bias white children
and teach them cross-cultural competence, a skill they will need to
effectively participate in a market with increasingly multicultural
customers, co-workers, and global business partners. The article
ends by describing steps white parents can take to ensure their
children gain critical cross-cultural competency skills.
A nation of diverse talents or of test-takers?
National standards will "cause irreversible damage to an education
system already suffering from No Child Left Behind," writes
Professor Yong Zhao of Michigan State University in The Detroit Free
Press. No evidence shows centralized standards lead to higher
achievement, he contends, and plenty indicates the opposite. "A
child who does not read or do math at the level and time point
stipulated is deemed at risk, regardless of other strengths, which
may actually be more valuable in future life." This child is then
put in remedial classes, and deprived of opportunities to develop
her strengths "to have a dream." National standards also discourage
innovation by forcing educators to focus exclusively on standards.
As a parent and educator, Zhao writes that he wants his children "to
have an education, not preparation to take tests. I want my children
to be able to have dreams even if they did not meet the state
standards. I want my children's teachers to be educators, not
implementers of government mandates. [President] Obama and the
nation's governors should preserve the legacy of our Founding
Fathers and build a nation of diverse talents and creative
entrepreneurs rather than a nation of standardized test-takers."
In search of an updated measure for poverty
The federal poverty measure is deeply flawed, writes Mark Greenberg
of the Center for American Progress. Established in the 1960s and
"low and in many ways arbitrary," current poverty metrics don't
consider tax credits and food stamps, omit key family expenses, and
don't adjust for geographical variation. Important federal policies,
drafted to aid families, continue to fall short. The pending
Measuring American Poverty Act would direct the Census Bureau and
Bureau of Labor Statistics to adopt measures based on
recommendations from the National Academy of Sciences (NAS). An NAS
panel would develop a "decent living standard" measure that would be
considerably higher than even an improved poverty measure. Whether
or not this moves forward, the Obama administration can adopt a new
"decent living standard" administratively without awaiting
legislation. "Now is the logical time for the administration or
Congress to act to improve the poverty measure," Greenberg writes.
"Doing so would provide a more accurate picture of how many people
are falling into poverty during the recession and who they are, and
it would ensure that the administration's policies and performance
can be gauged against a consistent measure that reflects the impacts
of a broad range of policies."
A popular president can shift attitudes on education
A new survey on American attitudes about public education by
Education Next suggests that a popular president can significantly
shift popular opinions, according to Reuters. The survey, conducted
when President Obama's approval ratings were above 60 percent (in
March), was designed to uncover factors affecting public opinion,
and to assess how people's views shifted when given new information.
A group of randomly selected respondents were given the president's
position before being asked their own; another was cited research on
a particular reform's positive effects that coincided with the
president's stated position. A control group was asked its opinion
without prompts. The survey found that the "Obama effect" could move
overall public opinion by anywhere from 11 (in the case of charters)
to 13 percentage points (in the case of merit pay). Responsiveness
was not uniform, however. Presidential appeals are more persuasive
to fellow partisans than those identifying with the opposition.
Cited research also impacts opinion, ranging from six percentage
points (in the case of merit pay) to 10 percentage points (in the
case of vouchers) to 14 percentage points (in the case of charters).
Research appears particularly influential among Democrats, and when
the public is undecided on an issue.
Related:
http://educationnext.org/files/pepg2009.pdf
Stimulus funds welcome but not used for reform
A new survey from the American Association of School Administrators
(AASA) has found that 53 percent of district leaders haven't been
able to use stimulus funds to save teaching positions in core
subject areas or special education, and 67 percent say redirecting
funds to reform has been difficult, according to The Christian
Science Monitor. Announcement of the education stimulus had raised
high hopes, but in fact the money has been mostly used to "backfill
budget deficits," according to Daniel Domenech, executive director
of AASA. State Fiscal Stabilization funds were largely used for gaps
from declining state and local funding. The remaining money was
generally mandated for specific purposes: Title I stimulus funds for
low-income students, and Individuals with Disabilities Education Act
(IDEA) dollars for special education. Administrators also worried
about a "funding cliff," creating jobs or starting programs they
couldn't fund after the stimulus ends in 2010-11. Critics say these
complaints reveal a lack of imagination -- a rethinking of
class-size configuration, technology use, or pay scales could free
up money. "One has to search long and hard to find districts doing
any of this," according to Frederick Hess of the American Enterprise
Institute.
Related:
http://www.aasa.org/content.aspx?id=5452
Boston's New Teacher Support
Nationally, teacher turnover is a critical issue. Too many leave the
profession within five years, with districts suffering financially
and students taught by teachers too inexperienced to be effective.
For the past six years, the Boston Public Schools (BPS) and local
education fund the Boston Plan for Excellence (BPE) have worked
together to overhaul the district's hiring and new-teacher support
systems, introducing a suite of professional development and
induction structures that address novice teachers' needs. Guided by
an annual survey of new teachers and graduates of the Boston Teacher
Residency (BTR) program, BPS and BPE have begun to pinpoint what new
teachers need and what districts can do to ensure their success.
"Hiring (and Keeping) Urban Teachers: A Coordinated Approach to New
Teacher Support," describes improvements fostered and lessons
learned. In the words of one Boston headmaster, "The BPS has done a
great job of completely rethinking new teacher support, from
training to hiring to mentoring to professional development. That is
just what we need to recruit the next generation of teachers."
Rural districts balk at RttT requirements
Secretary of Education Arne Duncan's reforms would be far-reaching,
but are they applicable everywhere? Education Week writes that
measures like merit pay have little appeal for communities where
there frankly isn't much to spend money on, as is the case in many
rural communities. Similarly, in low-population areas like Montana,
districts can have as few as one hundred students, and no need for
alternatives like charters. Advocates for rural communities across
the country are charging that Race to the Top rules ignore the
challenges of rural districts. In places with few students and fewer
teachers, opportunities for collaborative professional development
are limited, and districts lack the infrastructure for curriculum
development. As to performance pay based on peer review, if you're
the only math teacher for a hundred miles, who will review you?
Secretary Duncan appears unmoved by these objections. In his view,
recruitment and retention of good teachers and school leaders is a
problem for any underserved community, urban or rural. However, Mr.
Duncan and members of his staff are hosting listening-and-learning
meetings in several predominantly rural states, and developing a
communications strategy that they say keeps rural challenges at the
forefront during policy discussions.
Read Arne Duncan's position:
http://www.edweek.org/login.html?source=http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2009/06/17/35duncan_ep.h28.html&destination=http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2009/06/17/35duncan_ep.h28.html&levelId=2100
Why some triangles are skinny, and some are fat
In a drive to instill math fundamentals for an increasingly
math-reliant world, early childhood experts are advocating the
introduction of math concepts to children as young as three, reports
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. "It's not the traditional math we think
of in terms of calculations and memorization of algorithms and
things like that," explains Roberta Schomburg, associate dean in the
School of Education at Carlow University. "In the early years,
they're really learning concepts of number, space, passing of time,
volume. They're experiencing those at a very physical level." The
Committee on Early Childhood Mathematics of the National Research
Council recommends that parents and educators start talking about
numbers in ways that can lay the groundwork for future math skills.
For instance, preschool teachers can go beyond naming numbers and
shapes to include concepts: why a circle is a circle, and why
triangles can be both fat and skinny. Teachers can have children
count beyond 20, because that's when patterns -- a key mathematical
point -- emerge, according to Herbert Ginsburg, a member of the
committee and a professor at Columbia University. Dr. Ginsburg said
the panel isn't urging a fifth-grade curriculum on five-year-olds,
but that preschoolers be taught in a deep and systematic way, with
lots of activities and without textbooks.
NOLA's charter experiment yields successes, questions
Post-Katrina New Orleans is the site of 52 charter schools, with
nearly 60 percent enrolled in charters, the highest percentage of
any U.S. city. This sweeping change in the district has brought a
leap of nearly ten percent in state standardized tests scores,
writes USA TODAY. Though these Louisiana-specific scores are
difficult to compare with other urban systems, they still suggest
that the revamping of one of the country's worst-performing systems
is an experiment worth watching. "If these types of practices can be
taken across the country, especially in some of the more challenging
urban environments, that would make a difference in improving
education," said Tony Miller, a deputy secretary in the U.S.
Department of Education, which under Arne Duncan has been a champion
of charter schools. However, critics have pointed out that the
individualistic business models of charters are hard to replicate,
and others wonder what will happen when New Orleans's massive influx
of federal recovery money dries up. "It's been extraordinary as far
as student achievement," said Luis Mirón, director of the Institute
for Quality and Equity in Education at Loyola University, but he
adds that successes based on temporary measures may not be
sustainable.
Related:
http://www.nola.com/education/index.ssf/2009/08/pastorek_state_likely_to_run_n.html
Impatience grows with the ‘rubber room'
In what The New York Times is calling a "quiet act of defiance,"
many New York City principals are leaving teacher posts vacant
rather than filling them from the so-called absent teacher reserve
pool, as ordered by the city's Department of Education. The pool,
which retains teachers whose positions were eliminated but who
remain on the city's payroll, is the result of an agreement between
the teacher union and the district, and allowed principals to hire
without regard to seniority as long as jobless teachers retained
full salaries and benefits. As Chancellor Joel Klein closed
poor-performing schools, eliminating positions, many principals also
hired newer teachers who were cheaper and without the stigma of a
failing school. The "rubber room" swelled, and now stands at 1,983.
The freeze on hiring out-of-system teachers, an economic necessity
but "not ideal," according to the chancellor, has left reserve-pool
teachers frustrated about the scarcity of job offers, and new
teachers "furious" about the lack of job prospects. Principals find
staffing options drastically limited. Mr. Klein plans to push for
time limits in the reserve pool before permanent termination, but
thus far an arbitration board has rejected a limit.
BRIEFLY NOTED
D.C. schools placed several thousand emergency calls to police this
year
The good news: "serious incidents" fell by 17 percent to 1,117
compared with 2007-08. The bad news: there were still 3,500 calls
overall, according to the Heritage Foundation.
This time, Mr. Huxtable goes to Detroit
In his continuing efforts on behalf of public education, comedian Bill Cosby worked to woo students back to the Detroit Public Schools.
Symbolic steps on the path to performance pay for Los Angeles
The LAUSD has instituted a pay incentive program for high-level administrators that officials and board members hope will pave the way for merit-based compensation for teachers.
Michigan schools racing to race to the top
Dozens of districts have responded with proposals to state Superintendent Mike Flanagan's call to rethink the way children are educated as part of his bid to win RttT funds.
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